Champions Oncology Announces a Partnership with GigaMune to Discover Novel Tumor-Reactive T Cell Receptors

HACKENSACK, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / February 15, 2022 / Champions Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSBR), a leading global technology-enabled biotech that is transforming drug discovery through innovative AI-driven pharmaco-pheno-multiomic integration, announced today a co-development partnership with GigaMune. The partnership will combine Champions' novel Autologous Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocyte (TIL) platform with GigaMune's T Cell Receptor (TCR) Discovery platform to accelerate the development of next generation T cell therapies and cancer diagnostics, through the identification of novel TCR sequences.

The planned partnership will leverage GigaMune's proprietary TCR discovery and validation workflow to create a library of natively paired TCR sequences derived from Champions' Autologous TIL platform. The combination of Champions' unique autologous systems with GigaMune's proprietary discovery workflow will scale-up the ability to screen for novel TCR sequences, otherwise limited by the availability of TILs, while enabling the identification of rare-antigen reactive TCRs. The outcome of this effort will be unique functionally characterized libraries of TCRs. This TCR library will then be used to further the development of next generation T cell therapies and non-invasive early detection diagnostics, with a focus on solid tumor indications. Under the terms of the agreement, Champions will have the right to select a specified number of TCRs from the library for further, wholly owned, development. The remaining libraries will be jointly owned by Champions and GigaMune for commercialization, with commercial efforts led by Champions.

Ronnie Morris, MD, President and CEO of Champions Oncology, said "Our immune system is capable of recognizing and eliminating cells that have become infected or damaged as well as those that have become cancerous. Cellular or cancer immunotherapy therapy, is a form of treatment that uses the cells of our immune system to eliminate cancer and has brought significant improvements for cancer patients in terms of survival and quality of life and is considered a novel pillar of cancer care. Our unique Autologous TIL platform has expanded our knowledge of the complex interplay between the immune system and tumor cells. We've used the platform to better understand TIL biology, mechanisms of immune killing, and the confirmation novel intrinsic mechanisms of immune evasion. We've always envisioned that this platform could one day be used for discovery efforts, and this partnership with GigaMune will help to make that a reality. With these TCR libraries co-developed with GigaMune, we plan to explore the possible development of novel cell therapies, expand upon our early detection efforts, and commercialize the bulk of the TCR libraries through partnerships and our Lumin platform. We're excited to see how this partnership might contribute to the progress of these efforts."

"We're excited to partner with Champions to use world-leading GigaMune TCR discovery technologies to hunt for tumor-reactive TCRs in more TIL samples," said David Johnson, CEO of GigaMune. "Over the years we've found that getting the right samples is as important as having the right screening technology, so this project is a perfect partnership for success."

About Champions Oncology
Champions Oncology is a technology-driven research organization that develops innovative therapeutics against cancer targets, offers groundbreaking research software as a service, and provides end-to-end R&D services to biopharma organizations. Champions Oncology is actively engaged in the transformation of drug discovery through a novel approach of pharmaco-pheno-multiomic integration. For more information, please visit www.ChampionsOncology.com.

Media Contact:
Rachel Bunting, MS, MBA
Sr. Director, Head of Marketing
Marketing@ChampionsOncology.com

Website: www.championsoncology.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/championsoncology/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/champions-oncology-inc-/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChampionsOncol1
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/championsoncology/

About GigaMune
GigaMune is advancing T cell therapies for cancer by capturing and engineering T cell receptors (TCRs) directed against solid tumor targets. We apply our industry leading technology for TCR repertoire capture, published in Nature Biotechnology (PMCID: PMC7224336 DOI: 10.1038/s41587-020-0438-y), to develop personalized polyclonal TCR cell therapies.

Media Contact:
David Johnson, PhD, MBA
Founder and CEO
info@gigamune.com

SOURCE: Champions Oncology, Inc.