09. April 2020 2cureX Germany receives an additional grant

In January 2017 2cureX and UKE were granted net 810.216 EUR to adapt the IndiTreat® test to ovarian cancer and to predict immunotherapy drug responses in patients suffering from colorectal cancer. This work has progressed very satisfactorily and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) has now decided to endorse the project with an additional grant of 1.322.520 EUR with the intention that the method can benefit the patients faster. 2cureX will receive 553.280 EUR.

Because of its success in various solid cancers, immunotherapy is the fastest growing treatment approach in oncology. However, clinical evidence is accumulating that immunotherapy often needs to be combined with other drug modalities to improve the long-term treatment outcome for patients.

Ovarian cancer kills more than 40.000 women in Europe every year due to lack of effective and long-lasting therapeutic regimens. Nearly all patients become resistant to their initial treatment and more than half die within five years after diagnosis.

IndiTreat®, a Functional Precision Medicine test, will be able to measure the efficacy of both existing and novel immunotherapies alone or in combination with other cancer drugs thus providing an effective means to improve the overall outcome of ovarian cancer patients.

Jürgen Kupper, Managing Director, 2cureX GmbH says: “2cureX’s efforts to expand the capabilities of IndiTreat® to guide treatment of cancer patients is critically dependent upon active collaborations with world class clinical institutions. It is therefore with excitement that we now can strengthen our year-long collaboration with UKE to finalize the IndiTreat® test for immunotherapy in ovarian cancer patients.”

Jasmin Wellbrock, Oncology Research Leader, UKE says: “Although no immuno-oncological treatment has been approved for ovarian cancer so far, several candidates are in late clinical study phases. As we have seen with other cancer entities, we expect to see a large variation in how different patients respond to immunotherapy.”  Leticia Oliveira-Ferrer, Oncology Research Leader, UKE adds: “I see that Functional Precision Medicine tests could become an important tool for oncologists when identifying the patients that are sensitive to the new immunotherapy treatments.”