Eurostars Grant to support GBM Treatment Project

A consortium of industry and research partners including French Biotech Covalab, focused on  recombinant proteins and antibodies for diagnostics and therapeutics; CimCure (Netherlands), Amsterdam UMC (The Netherlands) and the University of Zurich (Switzerland, have received a €1.06M ($1.08M) grant from EUREKA Eurostars towards development of a new treatment against glioblastoma.  A total budget of €2.24M ($2.28M), including investments from the partners is available to support the project ‘Optimal Synergistic Immunotherapy Strategy (OpSIS)’, which will take place over 3 years.

OpSIS aims to will develop a combination therapy using CimCure’s iBoost vaccines and CAR-T cells against GBM and to then provide a validation for translation of this strategy in GBM patients. This project strives to demonstrate the efficacy, long-term persistence and synergistic ability of combining GMB-targeting CAR-T cells with tumour vasculature-targeting vaccines.

“We are excited to bring our extensive expertise in antibody engineering to the OpSIS project. Additionally, our platforms in molecular biology, immunology and bioproduction will support the preclinical validation of therapeutic molecules and we can use our know-how in anticancer immunotherapy for this unique combination therapy project in oncology,” said Dr Saïd El Alaoui, CEO and founder of Covalab.”

“The Eurostars funding of OpSIS provides a unique opportunity to test our iBoost vaccines in combination with other immunotherapy approaches. We see an important innovation in testing this combination strategy in glioblastoma, a disease with a dismal clinical outcome. The collaboration with Covalab, the University of Zurich and Amsterdam UMC is unique and promises major achievements,” said Diederik Engbersen, CEO at CimCure.

“Immunotherapy for brain tumous has been a major research focus at the University of Zurich. We are delighted to join forces with colleagues from the Netherlands and France, OpSIS will enable the development of novel treatment approaches by combining innovative immunotherapeutic strategies, to be explored in various clinically relevant models,” said Dr. Patrick Roth, University Hospital Zurich, Department of Neurology.

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