CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE American: CVM) today announced the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued two new U.S. patents for the Companys LEAPS platform technology.
CEL-SCIs LEAPS inventions relate to methods for diagnosing, preventing, and treating disease by generating or modulating the immune response through the use of specific peptides. LEAPS is a patented, T-cell modulation, peptide epitope delivery technology that enables CEL-SCI to design and synthesize proprietary peptide immunogens. LEAPS compounds consist of a small T-cell binding peptide ligand linked with a disease-associated peptide antigen.
The LEAPS platform technology is currently being developed as a therapeutic vaccine for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) under a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). Upon completion of preclinical and Investigational New Drug (IND) enabling studies for the LEAPS-based rheumatoid arthritis vaccine candidate CEL-4000, CEL-SCI intends to file an IND application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
These patents will help provide the protection we need as development of our LEAPS candidates progress from preclinical to clinical studies and they strengthen our ability to attract potential partners to license this technology, said Dr. Daniel Zimmerman, Senior Vice President of Research, Cellular Immunology.
This platform technology has been shown in several animal models to preferentially direct the immune response to a cellular (e.g. T-cell), humoral (antibody) or mixed pathway and has been shown to involve upregulation of T-regulatory (Treg) cells in some animal models. It has the potential to be utilized in diseases for which antigenic epitope sequences have already been identified, such as: a number of infectious diseases, some cancers, autoimmune diseases (e.g., RA), allergic asthma and allergy, and select CNS diseases (e.g., Alzheimer’s).
