IIQ publishes promising pre-clinical data for cancer treatment

Our early stage biotech Investment INOVIQ (ASX:IIQ) just published very promising data from its pre-clinical trials.

IIQ was able to demonstrate in a test tube that its CAR-exosome platform is able to destroy 88% of triple-negative breast cancer and non-small-cell lung cancer cells.

And similar positive results in lung cancer:

While these are very early stages (just test tube studies) - this data sets up IIQ for mice studies later this year.

We have seen what can happen off the back of mice data alone.

Another cancer cell therapy company in our Portfolio, ALA, moved up from 2 cents to 20 cents off the back of positive mice data.

The difference between ALA and IIQ is based on IIQ’s exosome technology platform. (more on what exosome are later)

We listened in on an IIQ webinar a few months ago where Chief Scientific officer Greg Rice laid out the case for why IIQ’s therapeutic product could work better than cell CAR-T cell therapies for solid tumours.

Greg talked about how cell therapies have come a long way and work well with blood cancers BUT not so well with solid tumours.

He then talked about how IIQ can overcome some of the problems that CAR cell therapies might have so that solid tumours can be targeted.

A lot of similarities initially, but the main difference = instead of reinjecting reprogrammed cells, IIQ isolates and collects the cancer killing exosomes and can take it one step further to develop Car-NK EV therapy.

IIQ can then inject that into patients.

He said that this approach could have some important scalability benefits over CAR-T cells because IIQ can give it to a larger cohort of patients whereas CAR-T is made on a per patient basis.

He laid out how it works in the following slide:

(Source)

He also spoke about why IIQ was going after Triple Negative Breast Cancer first.

Mainly because there are no current approved cell therapies for it.

The main way of treating it at the moment is chemo.

(Source)

So how does IIQ’s exosome tech work?

IIQ’s exosome platform

IIQ’s technology centres around exosomes.

Exosomes are naturally occurring delivery messengers between cells.

Think of exosomes as the postal service in the human body - they deliver packages with precise instructions and information, helping cells communicate.

IIQ has three target markets:

• Research Tools
• Diagnostic
• Therapeutics

IIQ is able to deliver both Diagnostics and Therapeutics solutions because of its EXO-NET product, which actually captures the right exosomes to use for therapies.

Exosomes are extremely small (about 100 times smaller than a human cell), so this product is one of the key reasons that IIQ can develop its technologies.

Last week IIQ announced results of a landmark study showing its ovarian cancer test detected all stage 1 and 2 ovarian cancers - with no missed diagnosis.

The ovarian cancer screening test achieved 77% sensitivity at 99.6% specificity in a case-control study.

We cover this news in detail here: IIQ: Breakthrough Result - Mass Market Cancer Test Next?

While IIQ has a number of products in its pipeline, we think that its most promising are around the ovarian cancer test and therapeutic data published today.

What is next for IIQ?

There’s a lot going on for IIQ.

Here is a quick summary of the key catalysts we will be watching out for over the coming months (the catalyst related to today’s announcement is bolded):

• 🔄 Further updates on solid tumour therapy in vivo studies (targeting Q3 in vitro results and Q4 in vivo results with Peter Mac this year)
• 🔄 A lab partner for SubB2M tests (for breast cancer monitoring - expected this quarter)
• 🔄 Clinical validation studies for the ovarian cancer screening test (expected this quarter)
• 🔄 Development of exosome diagnostic for neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson's. (Diagnostic development to start in Q3 of this year)