Company: ANIX
Filing Date: 2025-01-10
Form Type: S-8
Source: 0001493152-25-001798
Chunk: 15

Company: Anixa Biosciences Inc
Filing Date: 2025-01-10
Form: S-8
Chunk 15
---
 unmet medical need, as the overall five-year relative survival rate for ovarian cancer patients is 51%, but ranges from 42% among Black women to 61% among Asian American/Pacific Islander women.

Cancer vaccines

We licensed certain technology from Cleveland Clinic to develop vaccines for the treatment or prevention of TNBC and other breast cancers which express the α-lactalbumin protein. This protein is only expressed during lactation in healthy women, but may also be expressed in individuals with certain breast cancers, most notably TNBC, the most lethal form of breast cancer. Further, we have licensed certain technology from Cleveland Clinic to develop vaccines for the treatment or prevention of ovarian cancers which express AMHR2-ED. This protein regulates growth and development of egg-containing follicles in the ovary and its expression naturally and markedly declines after menopause. However, AMHR2-ED is expressed at high levels in the ovaries of postmenopausal women with ovarian cancer. In addition, we have entered into a Joint Development and Option Agreement with Cleveland Clinic to collaborate in efforts to develop additional vaccines for the prevention or treatment of cancers. Working with Cleveland Clinic researchers, we are focusing on the same novel scientific mechanism as in our breast and ovarian cancer vaccines, and working to discover additional retired proteins that may be associated with other forms of cancer, specifically high incidence malignancies in the lung, colon and prostate.

Typically, vaccines harness the immune system to protect people from infectious diseases. Broad-based vaccination programs have essentially eliminated some of the most deadly and debilitating diseases in history, small pox and polio among them. However, there has been little success developing a preventative (prophylactic) vaccine against cancer.

Vaccines work by exposing a benign form of a disease agent to an individual’s immune system. The immune system identifies the agent and learns to attack and destroy it, retaining a memory of the agent so the immune system knows to react quickly if an individual is exposed to the disease agent months or years later.

Most vaccines attack pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria. The immune system is better able to assail these agents because they come from outside the body. Cancer, however, is caused by aberrant cells that arise out of our resident cells, which can make it difficult for our immune system to find the diseased cells, especially as advancing age weakens our immune system. Once these aberrant cells gain critical mass, they become cancer.

Despite the lack of success with cancer vaccines, recently gained knowledge about the human immune system has led