CancerVax, Inc., the developer of breakthrough cancer drugs that will use the body’s immune system to fight cancer,  announced that its UCLA research team has achieved a critical milestone by creating a process to add any antibody to lipid nanoparticles (LNP) using “click chemistry”, for targeting cancer cells. 

Click chemistry is a revolutionary approach to chemical synthesis that won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022. It is characterized by high efficiency, high reliability, and simplicity in making precise molecular structures, such as LNPs, quickly and cost-effectively. In other words, you “click” together what you need and not anything else. The current approach to manufacturing LNPs uses imprecise melamine chemistry where unwanted materials end up in the final product, leading to toxicity and low efficiency.

The LNP is the vehicle that carries the functional cargoes of the Company’s Universal Cancer Vaccine (“UCV”) to precisely detect, mark and kill cancer cells. UCV uses multiple targeting signals to detect cancer cells with precision, as opposed to the conventional single signal targeting. By using click chemistry, the UCLA team has successfully created a customizable precision LNP architecture where various antibodies can be “clicked” onto the outside. These antibodies only bind to matching proteins (aka antigens) on the cancer cell surface like a lock-and-key mechanism. Once attached to the cell surface, the LNP would then enter the cancer cell and release additional UCV molecules that perform additional matching inside the cell to confirm that the cell is in fact a cancer cell. This multi-signal targeting is the very foundation of UCV’s high precision targeting of cancer cells.  

CancerVax CEO, Byron Elton, said, “We believe that precision targeting of cancer cells is vital to better patient outcome and higher quality of care. Previous generations of cancer treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and even other cancer vaccines are not that precise – as many people already know.  Our UCV is a revolutionary concept.  It is an outside the box approach that leverages state-of-the-art bioengineering and molecular technologies to develop a better way to treat cancer, by precisely detecting, marking, and killing cancer cells.  The UCLA team continues to tell us that they are very excited about this ‘fresh-thinking’ approach and are working tirelessly to advance the development of our Universal Cancer Vaccine platform.”