Protagen AG has announced the start of a collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to utilize Protagen’s SeroTag® technology to investigate the immuno-profiling of prostate cancer patients treated with checkpoint inhibitors and therapeutic vaccines.

Cancer immunotherapies can be very powerful and provide novel opportunities for the treatment of cancer. However, they currently work for a limited number of indications and patients. In addition, as these therapies re-activate the immune system to fight the cancer, they sometimes can cause severe immune-related Adverse Events (irAEs). Through the collaboration, Protagen and UCSF intend to provide further insight into utilizing immune system profiling to predict treatment response and monitor prostate cancer patients for irAEs, specifically, a so-called cold tumor that it is difficult to target with immuno-therapies.

Dr. Peter Schulz-Knappe, Protagen’s Chief Scientific Officer, commented: “Our proprietary SeroTag® technology has enabled patient stratification and immuno-profiling of patients into homogenous disease subgroups for several autoimmune indications. The strong link between immuno-oncology and autoimmune disease, confirmed by the observed irAEs under immunotherapy, provides us with an opportunity to improve immuno-profiling of cancer patients. We feel honored that Dr. Fong and UCSF share this view and we are excited about our collaboration, especially in an indication like prostate cancer that has shown to be difficult to target with immuno-therapies.” 

Dr. Lawrence Fong, the UCSF Efim Guzik Distinguished Professor in Cancer Biology and leader of the Cancer Immunotherapy Program in the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center added: “Although cancer immunotherapies can be effective in many different cancers, success in prostate cancer has been more limited. Nevertheless, we know that a small proportion of prostate cancer patients can respond to monotherapies. Immunologic profiling of these patients could enable approaches to patient selection. This collaboration could provide opportunities to accomplish this goal.”