PeptiCHIP · Pre-clinical validation and demonstration of PeptiCHIP: an immunopurification microfluidic device and software for (neo)antigen identification and prioritization

Clinical translation of cancer immunotherapies remains very challenging since 60-80% of patients fail to respond.The challenge stands in identifying specific tumour-fingerprints – the neoantigens - that are peptides expressed uniquely by cancer cells and that are capable of triggering an efficient immune response against cancer. Currently there is no standard method to identify antigens and the few methods available have significant limitations by being quite long, complicated and resource demanding. In response to this clear technological and market gap, Valo Therapeutics (ValoTx, an immunotherapy development company) is introducing PeptiCHIP, i.e. an innovative microfluidic immunopurification device and a peptide prioritisation algorithm to identify the most relevant (neo)antigens to stimulate the immune system and thus increase the chance of success of the immunotherapy. PeptiCHIP can be adapted and used to identify antigens related to any disease. The Proof of Concept (PoC) was successfully demonstrated at University of Helsinki. The IP was protected and ValoTx has full rights to further develop, exploit, and commercialize PeptiCHIP. This EIC Transition project will allow further technology development, testing, validating, and demonstrating it pre-clinically, generating evidence to convince investors and stakeholders, as well as to prepare an extensive and solid transition-to-market plan (T2MP). By being accurate, fast, low-cost, easy to use and working with very small amounts of samples, PeptiCHIP will have great impact in: 1) Research: for discovery & new therapies development since identification of antigens allows the understanding of diseases & immune response mechanisms; 2) Industry: for therapy development & translation into clinical use since the antigens identification & prioritization is a critical step to produce therapies tailored for each patient to ensure responsiveness; 3) Clinic: for patient assessment & immunotherapy tailoring.