The company uses its proprietary GT-EPIC™ platform to provide every cancer patient with a custom immunotherapeutic DNA plasmid designed to include up to 40 of their unique tumor’s neoantigens (abnormal mutations produced by cancer cells). For many hard-to-treat cancers, such as cancers with a low tumor mutation burden, this means that the plasmid will include all of the patient’s targetable neoantigens.

PICs are administered intra-dermally into skin tissue in a patient’s arms together with a cytokine adjuvant and followed by 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. Most of these TIL populations are new and expanded CD8 (Cluster of Differentiation 8) T-effector memory cells with a cytotoxic phenotype. Such T cells are known to have the ability to kill tumor cells. 

These TILs then travel to tumor tissues, and harness the power of the patient’s own immune system to coordinate an effort aimed at reducing, or even eradicating, their cancer. Neoantigens are newly formed, abnormal proteins that are absent in normal, health cells of the body. These abnormal protein variants are presented on the surface of cancer cells, recognized by the immune system as “foreign”, and cancer cells presenting the abnormal variants are targeted for killing by the immune system. Because all tumors express neoantigens the mechanisms of action of PICs may apply to the treatment of all cancers. Geneos clinical development to date has been done in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and glioblastoma (GBM). Geneos has initiated a Phase 2b randomized controlled clinical trial (RCT) in HCC patients at high risk of recurrence following surgery.