PHOENIX– OncoMyx Therapeutics, a privately-held oncolytic immunotherapy company, today announced the presentation of new preclinical data at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer’s (SITC) 36th Annual Meeting & Pre-Conference Programs (SITC 2021) being held November 10-14, 2021, both virtually and in Washington, D.C. The data demonstrate the potential of a multi-armed myxoma virotherapy for the treatment of solid tumors and heme malignancies. In addition to direct oncolytic effects on cancer cells, OncoMyx’s multi-armed myxoma platform show additional anti-tumor activity through immune activation and tumor microenvironment modulation. Furthermore, OncoMyx has previously established in a preclinical model of cancer that myxoma virus has anti-tumor efficacy following intravenous (IV) or intratumoral (IT) dosing (data presented at AACR 2021).
“Myxoma is a unique virus in that it naturally infects and kills cancer cells, but it is a nonhuman pathogen, so there’s no preexisting immunity, which allows for systemic dosing, a longer dosing window, and multi-dosing,” said Steve Potts, Ph.D., MBA, cofounder and CEO of OncoMyx. “Furthermore, the large size of the myxoma genome allows for the insertion of multiple genes to arm the virus with immune modulators that can orchestrate the cancer-immunity cycle for optimal viral-mediated cancer-killing activity. These data show the unmatched potential of our myxoma platform to be effective across a broad range of cancers, from hematological malignancies to solid tumors. The data, along with previously published studies, support the advancement of these therapies into clinical development as a monotherapy and in combination with many cancer therapeutics and immunotherapies, including checkpoint inhibitors and chemotherapies.”
Immune modulation is a key component of the anti-tumor activity of multi-armed myxoma virus in vivo. The data presented show myxoma multi-armed with decorin and IL-12 infects and kills primary human multiple myeloma cells in vitro and demonstrates efficacy in a mouse model of multiple myeloma. Additional data presented show multi-armed myxoma virus demonstrates efficacy in syngeneic and xenograft tumor models following IT or IV delivery and combinatorial efficacy with immune checkpoint inhibitors.
