An alpha-lactalbumin-targeted vaccine to treat and prevent breast cancer.
Anixa's breast cancer vaccine trains the immune system to recognize a “retired” protein — one the body makes only at certain times, that reappears in cancer. The aim is both to treat disease and, one day, to prevent it. The breast cancer vaccine has completed Phase 1.
A different kind of vaccine.
A conventional vaccine shows the immune system a harmless piece of a pathogen so it learns to recognize and remember the real threat. Cancer is harder: it arises from the body's own cells, so the immune system struggles to tell diseased cells from healthy ones.
Anixa's vaccine solves that by targeting “retired” proteins — ones the body makes only briefly, or in tissue it no longer needs, that reappear in cancer. Train the immune system against those, and it can destroy tumor cells while leaving healthy tissue alone.
One vaccine, two purposes
Attack cancer that already exists, and reduce the chance it returns in survivors.
Vaccinate individuals so the immune system destroys cancer cells as they arise, before a tumor ever forms.
Breast cancer vaccine · retired-protein targets
A market bigger than any cancer therapeutic.
Because a preventive vaccine can reach whole at-risk populations — not only patients after diagnosis — the opportunity is larger than for any cancer drug. The figures below are for the United States.
- Breast cancer. The most common cancer in the U.S.; the vaccine targets alpha-lactalbumin, including in aggressive triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Targets that appear in cancer, but not in healthy adults.
Our vaccine is built around a protein the body no longer needs — present in cancer, yet absent from the normal tissue of most adults. This target was identified by Cleveland Clinic researchers.
In the clinic. The breast cancer vaccine has completed Phase 1 having met primary endpoints.
Developed with leading research institutions.
The Cleveland Clinic is an academic medical center whose researchers identified the breast cancer vaccine’s target. Cleveland Clinic is consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program, which funds high-impact, clinically relevant research aimed at ending breast cancer.
Follow the breast cancer vaccine through the clinic.
The pipeline lays out every program by indication, stage, and partner.