Fighting cancer by mouth

With its first compound through Phase I, Vaximm AG has started to unveil the data and technology behind its preclinical pipeline of oral cancer vaccines. Using an attenuated Salmonella strain, the company is building a platform to create polyepitope vaccines against multiple tumor antigens, and co-opting the bacteria’s natural route of infection to deliver them.

On Tuesday, the company released an abstract ahead of this month’s AACR-NCI-EORTC conference demonstrating its technology can induce an immune response against multiple epitopes in mice. According to CEO Matthias Schroff, the constructs can hold up to 300 different epitopes, a key advantage for targeting neoantigens...