BioVex to Present Preliminary Phase I Data on Oncovex (GM-CSF) in Patients With Breast Cancer and Melanoma at the AACR

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BioVex to Present Preliminary Phase I Data on Oncovex (GM-CSF) in Patients With Breast Cancer and Melanoma at the AACR

    OXFORD, England, April 1 /PRNewswire/ -- BioVex announced today that it
will be presenting preliminary Phase I results from the clinical trial of its
lead oncology product candidate, OncoVEX (GM-CSF) in patients with a number of
tumour types, including breast cancer and melanoma, at the American
Association of Cancer Research meeting in Toronto.
    The results will be presented by Dr. Robert Coffin, Chief Scientific
Officer of BioVex at 9.00 am on Wednesday 9th April EST (abstract #5753) and
also as a poster (Hu, JCC et al abstract #5360) on Tuesday 8th April at
1.00 pm EST.

    Enquiries:

    Dr. Robert Coffin, Chief Scientific Officer        Tel: +44 (0)1235 441900
    Dr. Colin Love, Director of Product Development    Tel: +44 (0)1235 441900

    Notes to Editors (http://www.biovex.com)

    BioVex is a private biotech company whose principal focus is on the
development of therapeutic products for cancer and chronic infectious disease.
The Company has two unique proprietary product platforms (OncoVEX and
ImmunoVEX) and a functional genomics platform (NeuroVEX) all based on the
manipulation of the herpes simplex virus (HSV).  The Company is based near
Oxford, UK.

    OncoVEX  -- the first in a new class of oncolytic cancer vaccines

    First generation products, developed by other groups, based on viruses
that selectively replicate in and destroy tumour cells without affecting
healthy tissue have demonstrated proof of principle in man and have been shown
to be well tolerated.  BioVex has constructed a series of proprietary "second
generation" OncoVEX viruses which are not only several thousand fold more
lytic than first generation products (as evidenced by both pre-clinical and
clinical data) but are the only products in their class designed to stimulate
the immune system to destroy metastatic deposits.  This has been engineered,
in the case of its lead product, by the insertion of the gene for the immune
stimulating cytokine GM-CSF.

    ImmunoVEX  -- a unique dendritic cell based vaccine platform

    Considerable evidence from advanced clinical trials has shown that antigen
presentation by the immune systems key policing cells - dendritic cells - can
lead to a therapeutically effective immune response against disease associated
antigens to which the body has become tolerant.  These diseases include a
broad range of cancers and infectious diseases.
    HSV infects and delivers antigen-encoding genes to dendritic cells at very
high efficiency and has the potential to become the method of choice for
antigen delivery to these cells.  However, dendritic cells infected with HSV
are usually in-activated by the infection process.  BioVex has identified the
genes responsible for this inactivation.  The deletion of these genes provides
a proprietary vaccine platform which combines very efficient antigen delivery
to, and optimal stimulation of, this key class of antigen presenting cell.
    The Company's lead programme in this area, ImmunoVEX (tri-melan), is in
pre-clinical development for the treatment of malignant melanoma.

SOURCE BioVex

http://www.biovex.com
CONTACT:
Dr. Robert Coffin, Chief Scientific Officer,
+44-1235-441900, or Dr. Colin Love, Director of Product
Development, +44-1235-441900, both for BioVex