Barrigen has developed a robust pipeline, leveraging state-of-art science and technologies to creative novel oncolytic viruses for various cancer treatment. We’ve investigate various species of virus for cancers treatment by taking advantage of their unique virology properties towards better replicating capacity in cancer cells while limiting non-specific infection in normal cells. Functions of immune system is also considered for the viral construct design reflected by arming the oncolytic virus candidates with different functional transgenes with well-designed expression cassette.
BREV-1 induces selective tumor lysis while leaving healthy cells mostly. In addition to oncolytic effect, the adaptive immune response is triggered due to lysed tumor cells releasing signals that intrigue the body to the infection and attract immune cells. Lysed tumor cells would release tumor specific components. Dendritic cells in the tumor microenvironment recognize the released components and stimulate cytotoxic immune cells. This leads to tumor-specific immune-response that remembers and protects against cancers.
BREV-718 is a novel engineered virus in Barrigen’s oncolytic virus platform and is in development for a variety of tumor indications. It combines the virus backbone of BREV-1 with the expression of PD-1 specific antibody, a powerful immune-checkpoint inhibitor known to restore immune system function by blocking inhibitory checkpoint PD-1.
BREV-608 is a new generation of multiarmed oncolytic virus. BREV-608 is designed to combine the tumor associated antigen-specific targeting with the production of interleukin-12 which is a vital cytokine with regulatory functions for innate and adaptive immune function.
To full exploit the mechanism of actions underlines the oncolytic virotherapy, we are also running a few more projects to investigate the combination strategy for oncolytic virus with other cancer immunotherapies, such as immune-checkpoint inhibitors, engineered T cell adoptive transfer, cytokines, cancer vaccines, etc. By far, from the pre-clinical perspective, all of our oncolytic virus candidates have demonstrated excellent anti-tumor effect, great tumor specificity, and so forth promising potential.