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LICR Intellectual Property Portfolio Update

An interview with Dr. Jonathan Skipper

Over the past several years, as part of its efforts to translate laboratory research into viable cancer therapies, LICR has accumulated an extensive portfolio of intellectual property (IP). Recent reevaluation and prioritization of this IP portfolio has led to the formation of several new spinoff companies and licensing arrangements that offer the opportunity to have LICR discoveries developed into cancer diagnostics and therapies that benefit patients.

“When I formally came on board in January 2006, I had several objectives,” says Jonathan Skipper, Ph.D., LICR Executive Director for Intellectual Property and Technology Licensing. “First and foremost among these was to conduct an audit of the comprehensive IP portfolio built by Professor Munro Neville, who established the Office of Intellectual Property about seven or eight years ago. This assessment involved identifying key patent portfolios, and analyzing them for the maturity of the patents involved and the IP rights that they afforded LICR. I needed to determine how these patents could be licensed and commercialized to further their development.”

Also part of this assessment, according to Dr. Skipper, was the identification of the weakest patents and those that were peripheral to LICR’s key interests, to see if these holdings could be eliminated or readily licensed to cut patent maintenance costs without compromising the research of LICR investigators.

As a result of the re-assessment process, two approaches to licensing were utilized in 2006:

Vegenics Limited

One approach relates to the creation of a spin-off company that has licensed a major patent portfolio generated from LICR research findings. In this case, those findings are the patent estate on three angiogenic factors, Vascular Endothelial Growth Factors B, C, and D (VEGF-B, -C, and -D), from the LICR’s Angiogenesis Program.

Over the past 10 years, LICR and Licentia, the commercial arm of the University of Helsinki, have built up an extensive patent portfolio relevant to VEGF-C and –D and antagonists to these molecules, based largely on the work of LICR Affiliate, Kari Alitalo and LICR Melbourne Branch scientists Steven Stacker and Marc Achen. In April of this year, Circadian Technologies, an Australian biomedical venture capital company, collaborated with LICR and Licentia to form a spin-off company called Vegenics (reported in the June 2006 NewsLink).

“Circadian made an initial investment of $4 million Australian (dollars) in Vegenics, which is 50% owned by Circadian and 50% owned by LICR and Licentia,” explains Dr. Skipper. “LICR and Licentia have exclusively licensed to Vegenics all of their jointly owned technology covering VEGF-C and –D antagonists as therapeutic and diagnostic agents, subject to Vegenics raising $16 million Australian in new equity by April 2008. The current plan is for Vegenics to raise the money over the next 8 to 12 months either through a listing on the Australian stock exchange or through private investors.”

According to Dr. Skipper, spin-off companies - such as Vegenics and Life Science Pharmaceuticals (LSP), which has licensed IP from the Antibody Targeting Program - are vehicles that allow LICR to maintain involvement, even though they are essentially commercial enterprises. “We maintain an equity/ownership position to some degree, so that we can have input into the decisions that get made about the company. As the companies grow, and more investors come on board, our position will become less prominent. However, during the first few years, we will have some say in the initial development of our technologies.” 

GlaxoSmithKline and MAGE

The second approach relates to outlicensing to ensure the clinical development of LICR findings. Dr. Skipper points out that although LICR has its own clinical trials capacity, the Institute is limited in both the number and size of clinical trials that it can conduct, meaning that licensing the technology is the most effective way of getting LICR discoveries to human benefit. “Our technologies and discoveries need to be seen as viable in the eyes of the commercial world, and particularly to partners who can take them widely into the clinic.”  

 
LICR holds patents on a number of tumor-specific antigens that are ideal targets for cancer vaccines, with a number of these falling into the category of cancer/testis (CT) antigens, which have a unique antigen expression profile. The clinical investigation of these antigens has been a major focus of LICR’s Cancer Vaccine Program, under the auspices of the Cancer Vaccine Collaborative partnership formed by LICR and the Cancer Research Institute in New York.

One of these CT antigens is Melanoma AntiGEn, or MAGE, which was discovered by Dr. Thierry Boon (Director, Brussels Branch) and his team. LICR has had a long-standing agreement with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) relevant to GSK’s MAGE-A3 Antigen Specific Cancer Immunotherapy (ASCI). This immunotherapy is based on MAGE-A3, which was previously licensed by GSK from LICR.  

“In June 2006,” explains Dr. Skipper, “GSK presented promising interim results from a phase 2 clinical trial of its MAGE-A3 ASCI in patients with Non Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting. Encouraged by these findings, the company licensed a significant number of additional CT antigens, including NY-ESO-1, from LICR. These antigens are found in a wide variety of cancers, including NSCLC, melanoma, breast cancer, head and neck cancer, bladder cancer, and liver cancer.”

According to Dr. Skipper, in terms of traditional outlicensing agreements, the GSK deal is very encouraging. “GSK has offered us the option of collaborating with them to gain access to clinical samples and material from patients entering their clinical trials, so that we may continue to do the science surrounding their studies in the field of cancer vaccines. The GSK agreement is a great example of exactly what we are trying to encourage. This gets our discoveries and our science into the clinic, and potentially into commercial development. Hopefully, it will then be of value to patients.”

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