October 10, 2021/eMedClub News/--Recently, the "2021 Oncolytic Virus Drug Development Forum" co-sponsored by eMedClub, InnoMicro and HeyuanBio was successfully held in Shanghai Evergreen Laurel Hotel. Experts and leaders from the scientific community, policy-related departments, associations, and industry have conducted in-depth discussions on the latest developments, innovative technologies, and focus issues of current oncolytic virus drugs.

First of all, Liu Houjia, deputy director of the biomedical industry of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economic and Information Technology, gave an opening speech, congratulating the successful convening of this conference. Liu Houjia said that the biomedical field is an industry that Shanghai attaches great importance to, and is an important development direction in the future; It is hoped that this conference can promote industrial exchanges and allow the biomedical industry to flourish.

Liu Houjia, Deputy Director of Biopharmaceutical Industry, Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology

After the speech, under the introduction of the host HLT Chief Medical Officer Tan Qian, the meeting agenda officially began.

HLT Chief Medical Officer Tan Qian served as the host

The global pharmaceutical market will grow from the current USD 1.380 billion and is expected to exceed USD 200 billion in the next ten years. Among them, under the driving factors of continuously increasing market demand, technological progress and sales growth of new products, the biopharmaceutical market is expected to reach 768 billion U.S. dollars in 2030.

Driven by biological drugs, the Chinese pharmaceutical market will expand from the current 1.550 billion yuan to nearly 3 trillion yuan in 2030.

As the first guest speaker of this conference, Chen Shaoxiong, Executive Chairman and Secretary-General of Shanghai Biomedical Industry Association, brought us a wonderful sharing entitled "Development Direction of Shanghai Biomedical Industry". At present, the scale of Shanghai's biomedical industry has reached 600 billion yuan; the total industrial output value of the biomedical manufacturing industry has reached 141.66 billion yuan, with an average growth rate of 10.3%.

During the sharing, Chen Shaoxiong analyzed the development status, opportunities and challenges of Shanghai's biomedical industry for us, and summarized the development goals and specific measures of Shanghai's biomedical industry.

Chen Shaoxiong, Executive Chairman and Secretary-General, Shanghai Biomedical Industry Association

Then Xu Qing, chief physician of the Tenth People's Hospital affiliated to Tongji University, brought a theme report of "Shanghai Expert Consensus on the Clinical Application of Oncolytic Viruses in Treatment of Malignant Tumors", introducing oncolytic virus dosages, adverse reactions, and combination therapy are the future trend.

As an emerging tumor biological immunotherapy method, oncolytic virus has been approved for use by regulatory agencies in China and many European and American countries. Oncolytic viruses can kill cancer cells through a variety of mechanisms, enhance the anti-tumor immune response, and produce a longer-lasting response with good safety.

Oncolytic virus combination therapy is an important trend in the future. By combining with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and targeting, especially with immunotherapy, the efficacy of original drugs can be improved. At present, the system and physical barriers of the tumor microenvironment are still the main obstacles affecting the clinical efficacy of oncolytic viruses, and they are also the main focus of future research.

Chief Physician of the Tenth People's Hospital Affiliated to Tongji University Xu Qing

The field of oncology has entered the age of immunotherapy, including immunomodulators, cellular immunity, tumor vaccines, and oncolytic viruses. After two consecutive heavy reports, Liang Xiaohua, the chief physician of the Oncology Department of Huashan Hospital, brought a keynote report on "Clinical Value-Oriented-Clinical Challenges and Perspectives in the Development of New Tumor Immunotherapy".

The CDE recently released the "Clinical Value-Oriented Clinical Research and Development Guidelines for Oncology Drugs", which emphasizes patient needs as the core. From the perspective of the clinical value of drugs, Liang Xiaohua believes that effectiveness, safety, and convenience are the focus of new drug research and development.

Liang Xiaohua, Chief Physician of Oncology Department of Huashan Hospital

With the end of Liang Xiaohua's report, the scene entered the coffee break, and the audience communicated with the guests on the spot.

After the coffee break, the next guest speaker, Ji Dongmei, deputy chief physician of the Department of Oncology, Fudan University Cancer Hospital, brought the theme report "Clinical Progress of Oncolytic Virus Products (T3011)" to the audience.

MVR-T3011 through the new design of the wild HSV-I herpes virus skeleton, while realizing the optimal attenuation effect, while ensuring the replication ability of the virus in tumor cells and the safety to normal cells; at the same time, it is introduced on the virus skeleton PD-1 antibody and IL-12 exogenous gene to further strengthen the product's anti-tumor immune response.

Clinical research data shows that intratumoral injection of T3011 has shown ideal safety and effectiveness. Many patients had partial remission, and 75% of patients had stable disease. The biopsy results showed that tumor cells were significantly reduced and lymphocyte infiltration increased, indicating that the injected product caused a targeted anti-tumor response. In addition, a clinical study of intravenous administration of T3011 has been initiated. Two patients have received multiple administrations for more than 21 days. No dose-limiting toxicity was observed.

Ji Dongmei, Deputy Chief Physician, Department of Oncology, Fudan University Cancer Hospital

Amidst the applause of the audience, the next speaker for us was Jia Weiguo, co-founder and chief scientist of Fonogym Bio, on "VG2025: the first biological target-based tumor-specific enhanced oncolysis "Virus" gave a wonderful speech.

The world's first TTDR (Transcription and Translation Dual Regulation) oncolytic virus backbone platform is the first HSV virus platform that simultaneously enhances oncolytic activity and safety. Because the transcriptional activity of tumor-specific promoters in tumor cells is higher than that of the virus itself, in tumor cells, TTDR virus has a stronger oncolytic activity than wild viruses. The TTDR oncolytic virus driven by a tissue-specific tumor gene promoter makes the replication of the virus correlated with biomarkers, and pioneered a precise targeted oncolytic virus therapy, making the clinical application of basket-like design possible.

The first VG2025 with TTDR as the backbone has been proven to be highly tumor selective in multiple safety studies, and CEA(+) tumors can potentially be used as VG2025 clinical indications. VG2025 has strong anti-tumor in vivo activity and anti-tumor immune transformation characteristics, and the highly restricted and continuous high expression of foreign genes in tumors.

Jia Weiguo, Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Fonogym Bio

The technology of oncolytic virus is still in the development stage of continuous advancement, and continuous optimization, breakthrough, and innovation are the important missions at this stage. In the afternoon roundtable forum, many heavy guests were invited to discuss the topic of "Clinical Issues Promoting the Innovation and Development of Oncolytic Virus Drugs".

The roundtable forum was hosted by Jia Weiguo, co-founder and chief scientist of Fonogym Biotech, Xu Qing, chief physician of the Tenth People's Hospital Affiliated to Tongji University, Ni Dongyao, chief R&D officer of Yinuowei Pharmaceutical, and Li Gongchu, founder of Hangzhou Gongchu Biotech, Suzhou Hu Minjie, Chairman and CEO of Prajna Bio, and Tan Qian, Chief Medical Officer of HLT, and the audience had a lively discussion on the clinical issues of oncolytic viruses.

Roundtable Forum

Immediately afterwards, Lu Shun, director of the Oncology Department of the Chest Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University, brought a speech titled "Past, Present and Future of Immunotherapy for Lung Cancer" to the audience. Immunotherapy led by immune checkpoint inhibitors has gone through a golden decade and has become the first-line and second-line drugs for many cancer types. It has continuously expanded its indications and is moving steadily in the direction of "no tumor type" therapy. The method to classify tumors into four major types: "cold", "blocking", "inhibitory" and "hot" according to the immune environment is being established and improved. Different immune types of tumors may correspond to different and diverse immunotherapy methods.

Enhancing tumor targeting is a hot spot for future improvement and innovation of immunotherapy drugs. Therapies with tumor targeting, including ADC, bispecific antibodies, T/NK cell engager, etc., are mostly in the clinical validation stage or have just been approved. They will further improve the efficacy, expand the safety window, and increase the number of benefited patients to provide a powerful impetus.

Lu Shun, Director of Oncology Department, Chest Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University

Oncolytic virus is a kind of therapeutic drug with little toxicity. However, based on many previous basic researches, the single-drug treatment effect of tumor is not enough to meet the needs of patients. Therefore, oncolytic virus will likely become an important part of combination drugs. .

At this meeting, Chen Xiaoqing, Vice President of Innomicrod Drug Research and Development, shared a research report with the theme of "Oncolytic Virus Solid Tumor Treatment Development Progress in Combination with CAR-T Cell Drugs".

Oncolytic virus combination therapy has outstanding advantages in solid tumors. Innomicro's MVR-T7 series is specially designed for use in combination with CAR-T. It does not harm CAR-T cells and normal T cells, and has no negative impact on the viability and proliferation of CAR-T cells. T7 series oncolytic viruses combined with CAR-T have shown a powerful synergistic killing effect on multiple types of tumor cells. In addition, intratumoral injection or intravenous injection are both potential routes of administration.

Chen Xiaoqing, Vice President of Drug Research and Development of Innomicro

Then Yuan Ming, chairman of Huayao Kangming Biopharmaceuticals, brought a keynote report on "Oncolytic Poxvirus Drug Development". Mr. Yuan Ming introduced to us the overview of clinical trials of oncolytic viruses, analyzed how to choose oncolytic viruses, and pointed out that the method of administration is a key issue that needs to be considered.

Vaccinia virus can promote the invasion of T cells in tumors, turning immune cold tumors into hot tumors; its anti-tumor immunity can prevent tumor recurrence, and its biological characteristics make it suitable for intravenous injection.

Yuan Ming, Chairman of Huayao Kangming Biopharmaceutical Industry

After the coffee break, the next person to share the report is "Oncolytic Pox Virus Modification Technology" brought by Li Gongchu, founder of Hangzhou Gongchu Biotech.

Stria protein interacting protein 1 (STRIP1) is one of the components in the complex of stria protein interacting phosphatase and kinase. STRIP1 has shown the potential to regulate the virus defense response of tumor cells. OncoVV-STP1 shRNA of oncolytic vaccinia virus promoted U87MG and SW20 cell apoptosis and significantly prolonged the survival time of tumor-bearing mice. The GC001 oncolytic vaccinia virus injection based on this technology has basically completed preclinical research, and its effectiveness, stability, and safety have been verified.

Li Gongchu, founder of Hangzhou Gongchu Biology

Next, Wang Yaohe, director of China's National International Joint Research Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, brought to the audience a keynote report on "Development of Next Generation Oncolytic Virus Drugs and Evaluation of New Animal Models for Oncolytic Viruses". Wang Yaohe analyzed the ideal characteristics and optimization strategies of next-generation oncolytic viruses, and introduced an ideal animal model for evaluating oncolytic viruses.

Finally, Wang Yaohe pointed out the future direction of oncolytic viruses, including oncolytic virus combined antibody, cell therapy, and oncolytic virus sequential therapy. In addition, the use of appropriate animal models is also very important. The FDA and EMA clearly list golden hamsters as models of oncolytic viruses.

Wang Yaohe, Director, China National International Joint Research Center for Cell and Gene Therapy

Human tumors are completely different from transplanted tumors in animals (very "cold", low blood supply, hypoxic, and require oncolytic viruses to help them "heat up"). Its occurrence and development is a "long" multi-stage development process. Among them, most solid tumors have abundant blood supply and nutrition, even more than normal tissues/organs. In addition, 85% of solid tumors are related to chronic inflammation, and redness, swelling, and heat are their basic characteristics.

Dong Jie, Technical Director of Novi Biotech and VIA Biomedical, brought a wonderful speech report "Progress in Oncolytic Virus Immunotherapy Regulating Metabolic Inflammatory Microenvironment" to the audience. Dong Jie introduced the development and goals of oncolytic virus therapy in the report, and shared the anti-tumor effect of oncolytic adenovirus NV-A01.

Dong Jie, Technical Director of Novi Biotechnology and VIA Biomedicine

At the end of the first day of the conference, Zhou Guoqing, CEO of Rongrui Medicine, gave a speech on "Oncolytic Virus Vaccine Targeting Tumor Cells, Changing the Game Rules of Target Screening for Tumor Treatment".

At present, single immunotherapy is facing bottlenecks such as tumor heterogeneity, immune escape, and low efficacy. Rongrui Medicine's oncolytic virus vaccine based on vesicular stomatitis virus has two specific functions: tumor cell target labeling and endogenous specific T cell proliferation + epitope spreading. Thereby effectively preventing tumor immune escape and realizing effective control of solid tumor combined therapy.

At this point, the first day of the conference on September 23 is officially over. Yimike will continue to report for you on the second day of the 2021 Oncolytic Virus Drug Development Forum. We will work on the internal media platform of the industry to do more for you. Please stay tuned for the report.

Source: Leading Brand of Industry Summit

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