Cancer Immunotherapy

Cancer immunotherapy refers to treatments that harness and enhance the innate powers of the immune system to fight cancer. Based on the immune system’s extraordinary power, its capacity for memory, its exquisite specificity, plus its central and universal role in human biology, cancer immunotherapy has the potential to achieve complete or long-lasting remission.

ORYX is focused on cancer immunotherapy and has developed three projects through clinical Phase I/IIa trials that have the potential to treat a wide range of cancers.

The ORYX portfolio includes an oncolytic virus, which infects and lyses tumor cells to evoke a strong immune response against tumor cells. Two other clinical projects comprise therapeutic cancer vaccines intended to treat the tumor by enhancing the patient’s natural defenses against the tumor. The vaccines use tumor-specific antigens, which are constantly expressed by the tumor. This expression prevents tumor escape mechanisms commonly observed in cancer vaccination projects.

The ORYX projects originate from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the University of Heidelberg. ORYX has exclusive worldwide patents and utilization licenses on these projects.

Pipeline

Following intensive preclinical studies, ORYX started clinical development of three cancer immunotherapy projects in 2011.