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Emory, Metaclipse Therapeutics get $2.4 million grant for breast cancer vaccine

7/21/2016, Ellie Hensley, Atlanta Business Chronicle

A team of Emory University and Atlanta-based Metaclipse Therapeutics Corp. researchers landed a $2.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute.

The five-year grant will be used to develop new cancer vaccine immunotherapies for patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

A team of Emory University and Atlanta-based Metaclipse Therapeutics Corp. researchers landed a $2.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute. The five-year grant will be used to develop new cancer vaccine immunotherapies for patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

TBNC is very hard to treat because it doesn't present any defined targets for drugs or vaccines to attack, and five-year survival rates are lower for it than other types of breast cancer. The disease is more common in young African-American women.

The researchers are developing a vaccine using tumor membrane vesicles derived from the patient's own tumor.

NIH previously gave Metaclipse a grant to study the vaccine technology in a mouse model of TNBC. It has also received grants from the Georgia Research Alliance Venture Lab program and the Coulter Foundation.

Now Metaclipse and Emory will use a new mouse model that more closely mimics the human immune system. Researchers will use both mouse tumor tissue and human TNBC tissue to compare standard-of-care chemotherapy treatments alone versus those combined with the vaccine they are testing.

Co-principal investigators for the study are Periasamy Selvaraj, Emory professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and Winship Cancer Institute member, and Christopher Pack, director of preclinical research at Metaclipse Therapeutics.

Ellie Hensley is an entertainment, health care and general assignment reporter.

To read the original article on the Atlanta Business Chronicle website, click here.

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