Grant: Proof of Principle Program - Phase I

Effective brain cancer therapies remain a critically unmet need in human healthcare. Advances in surgical, radiation and chemotherapeutic treatments have done little to change patients' outcomes in the past 30 years. Clearly, new approaches are needed if we are to control these diseases. Many groups worldwide have been exploring the use of viruses that can selectively replicate in and kill tumour cells without harming normal cells; these so called "Oncolytic Viruses" (OV) have shown some remarkable results in late stage clinical trials. Despite this clinical success most OVs are inherently neurotoxic and are not safe to use with brain cancer. Recently, we have discovered a new OV variant (a Chimeric Maraba virus) that is non-neurotoxic when injected directly into the brain of mice and that is also effective in a rodent model of brain cancer in vivo and human glioblastoma tumour cells in vitro. A current impediment to further clinical development of this virus therapy is a lack of safety/toxicity data in non-human primates (NHP). The work proposed in this grant is primarily directed at clearing this road block by testing a small scale manufactured lot of Chimeric Maraba virus in a preliminary NHP safety study. A secondary goal of the grant is to expand the Intellectual Property protection to other similar but novel Chimeric Maraba candidates. Our overarching goal with this proposal is to de-risk this platform sufficiently to engage a partner for further clinical development. If successful in these studies and in partnering as described, we expect to conduct the necessary pre-clinical testing and initiate clinical trials within 3 years.