Frame Cancer Therapeutics
Developing mRNA-based cancer immunotherapies, targeting Frame neoantigens to activate the immune system against tumors.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | investor | €0.0 | round |
| investor | €0.0 | round | |
* | €16.0m Valuation: €32.0m | Acquisition | |
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
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Frame Cancer Therapeutics, now operating as CureVac Netherlands, is a biopharmaceutical entity focused on developing immunotherapies against cancer. Founded in December 2018 by Ronald Plasterk, Bob Lowenberg, and Dinko Valerio, the company is located in the Amsterdam Science Park. The firm's core objective is to harness the patient's own immune system to fight tumors through a specialized approach to cancer vaccines.
In June 2022, Frame Cancer Therapeutics was acquired by the global biopharmaceutical company CureVac for a total consideration of €32 million, paid in CureVac shares. This acquisition integrated Frame's antigen discovery and validation technologies with CureVac's extensive experience in mRNA vaccine development. The company now functions as CureVac's Antigen Discovery and Validation Center, concentrating on both personalized and off-the-shelf mRNA cancer vaccines. Following the acquisition, the development of personalized cancer vaccines was refocused to an mRNA modality.
The company's business model centers on its proprietary FramePro platform. This bioinformatics and genomics platform analyzes a patient's tumor DNA and RNA to identify structural changes in the cancer genome that lead to novel proteins, known as frame-shift neoantigens. These proteins are absent in healthy tissues, allowing the immune system to recognize them as foreign. While these genetic alterations are often unique to an individual's tumor, the resulting neoantigenic proteins can be shared among multiple patients, enabling the development of both highly personalized treatments and more broadly applicable, off-the-shelf vaccines. A key milestone was achieved in December 2021 when Dutch regulators approved a clinical trial protocol for FRAME-001, a peptide-based vaccine approach for 15 patients with non-small cell lung cancer, before the strategic pivot to mRNA with CureVac.
Keywords: cancer immunotherapy, neoantigens, personalized cancer vaccine, mRNA vaccine, oncology, genomics, bioinformatics, tumor DNA analysis, off-the-shelf cancer vaccine, CureVac, FramePro, frame-shift mutations, antigen discovery, clinical trials, non-small cell lung cancer, biopharmaceutical, therapeutic vaccines, tumor-specific antigens, immuno-oncology, RNA sequencing