The company uses its proprietary GT-EPIC™ platform to provide every cancer patient with a custom vaccine therapeutic designed to include up to 40 of their unique tumor’s neoantigens (abnormal mutations produced by cancer cells). In most cases this means that the vaccine will include all of the patient’s targetable neoantigens.

PTCVs are administered intra-dermally into skin tissue in a patient’s arms together with a cytokine adjuvant and electroporation. There, far away from the tumor microenvironment, they direct the immune system to create tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) programmed according to the identity of the delivered neoantigens. The majority of these TIL populations are new and expanded CD8 T-effector memory cells with cytotoxic phenotype, a type of T cell known to have the ability to kill tumor cells. 

These TILs then travel to tumor tissues, wherever they may be in the patient’s body, and harness the power of the patient’s own immune system to coordinate an effort aimed at reducing, or even eradicating, the cancer. Because all tumors express tumor neoantigens the mechanisms of action of PTCVs may apply to the treatment of all cancers. The majority of Geneos clinical development to date has been done in hepatocellular carcinoma with planning now underway for a potentially registrational clinical trial.