Treos Bio Announces the Publication of Preclinical Data in Frontiers in Genetics Showing its COVID-19 Peptide Vaccine Mimics the Diversity of T Cell Immunity Produced by Natural SARS-CoV-2 Infection

Results have strong implications for the development of global, highly immunogenic and long-lasting T cell-focused vaccines against various pathogens and diseases

LONDON, June 28, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Treos Bio Limited (“Treos”), a clinical stage biotechnology company using data science and proprietary biomarkers to develop precision off-the-shelf and personalized peptide cancer immunotherapies, today announced the publication of a peer-reviewed article titled “A Peptide Vaccine Candidate Tailored to Individuals’ Genetics Mimics the Multi-Targeted T Cell Immunity of COVID-19 Convalescent Subjects” in Frontiers in Genetics. The paper reviewed the potential of PolyPEPI-SCoV-2, the Company’s peptide vaccine candidate, to potentially address all four structural proteins of the COVID-19 virus in order to generate long-term immunity in virtually all human subjects, independent of ethnicity.

“We are gratified to see these promising results published in Frontiers in Genetics, providing another scientific validation for our novel approach to match patients’ genetic background to T cell responses, which was already successfully applied for the design of our off-the-shelf cancer vaccines. We believe long-term immunity to coronaviruses will likely originate from targeted and broad T cell responses and we think that our technology has the potential to produce long-lasting immunity against this variable virus,” said Dr. Christopher C. Gallen, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Treos. “Overall, with the downstream physiological activation shown, these data have compelling implications for the development of highly immunogenic, T cell-focused global vaccines against various pathogens and diseases. We look forward to leveraging our proprietary data science and therapeutic platform to continue investigating this program.”

Article highlights include:

• For the first time, individuals’ complete HLA-genotype and ethnicity were considered for the selection of shared SARS-CoV-2-specific epitopes

• PolyPEPI-SCoV-2 vaccination will likely elicit multi-antigenic T cell responses in 98% of individuals, independent of ethnicity (unlike the commonly used epitope selection approach based only on frequent HLA alleles which would discriminate some ethnicities)

• PolyPEPI-SCoV-2 generated robust, Th1-biased CD8+ and CD4+ T cell responses against all represented proteins, as well as binding antibodies upon subcutaneous injection into BALB/c and hCD34+ transgenic mice modeling human immune system

• PolyPEPI-SCoV-2-specific, polyfunctional CD8+ and CD4+ T cells were detected in each of the 17 asymptomatic/mild COVID-19 convalescents’ blood against an average of seven different vaccine peptides

• Convalescents’ complete HLA-genotype predicted their T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2-derived peptides with 84% accuracy (unlike commonly used epitope prediction methods)
  

The full article is accessible at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2021.684152/full and at http://treosbio.com/index.php/publications-2/.

About Treos Bio Limited
Treos Bio uses computational data science and proprietary biomarkers to develop precision off-the-shelf and personalized peptide-based cancer immunotherapies. The Company has developed a unique ability to match the antigens expressed by a specific cancer to the individual patient’s target recognition mechanism (HLA). This technology aims to address the challenge of the variability of an individual patient’s clinical responses to cancer immunotherapies. Treos’ lead candidate is PolyPEPI-1018, an off-the-shelf immunotherapy for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer, co-developed with a candidate companion diagnostic. Treos is also developing “off-the-shelf” personalized immunotherapies (PEPI Panel) for several types of solid tumors and has completed preclinical development of PolyPEPI immunotherapies in ovarian, breast, bladder, gastric and lung cancers and melanoma. The Company is also developing an investigational COVID-19 peptide vaccine, PolyPEPI-SCoV-2. Treos launched in February 2017 and has raised $28 million Series A funding led by shareholders of BXR Group and recently closed a $14 million investment round led by Outsized Ventures (formerly known as Luminous Ventures). More information can be found at www.treosbio.com.

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