“We were very pleased to be one of the companies approved for funding under this innovative program and we are using this opportunity to advance our clinical studies program as quickly as possible. These funds help to offset the rather high costs associated with clinical trials, and although these expenses were already planned for, the QTDP grant allows ITI to accelerate its pace into the clinic,” remarked CEO, Dr. William Hearl.
JRC-LAMP-vax will treat cedar pollinosis endemic in Southeastern U.S. (North Carolina and East Texas). The product represents the first of ITI’s allergy vaccines that are expected to broadly impact the treatment and prevention of many allergies. The economic impact of allergy is significant: since 1995, the number of Americans suffering from allergies has doubled, leading to a 338% rise in medical expenses. Americans spent $5.4 billion on allergy drugs in 2009 (source: Fortune, 2010).
About Immunomic Therapeutics
Recipient of the 2010 Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation Award in DNA Vaccines, Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc. (“ITI”) is a privately held clinical stage biotechnology company headquartered in Lancaster, PA with offices in Baltimore & Rockville, MD. ITI is developing next generation vaccines based on patented LAMP Technology. Our LAMP-vax™ platform significantly increases the effectiveness of the immune response to nucleic acid vaccines while simplifying overall vaccine design and delivery, yielding safer, more cost-effective human and animal therapies. Our LAMP constructs have been validated in human clinical trials (Geron’s GRNVAC1) cancer and have been applied to a wide breadth of targets including allergy, cancer and infectious diseases (e.g., Influenza, HIV, West Nile Virus, Dengue and others). See www.immunomix.com for more details.
About the QTDP
The QTDP is targeted to therapeutic discovery projects that show potential to result in new therapies to treat areas of unmet medical need or prevent, detect or treat chronic or acute diseases and conditions; reduce the long-term growth of health care costs in the United States. It also has the goal of eliminating cancer as a major health treat over the next 30 years. See www.irs.gov for more details.