Corporate Information
Summary
Immutep S.A. is a biopharmaceutical company developing immunostimulatory factors for the treatment of cancer and chronic infectious diseases and immunomodulatory therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of cancer or autoimmune disease. The Company's technologies are based on a key immune control mechanism that mediates T cell immune responses.
The Company's range of products is derived from LAG-3 (CD223), an immunomodulatory protein expressed on the surface of activated T cells. The unique proprietary product platforms make use of the key roles played by this natural human protein in the regulation of the immune system.
ImmuFact® - T cell Immunostimulatory Factors
The lead product, ImmuFact® IMP321, is a highly potent T cell immunostimulatory factor derived from the soluble form of LAG-3 that binds, with high affinity, to MHC class II molecules expressed by dendritic cells (DC). This binding leads to DC maturation, migration to the lymph nodes and enhanced cross-presentation of antigens to T cells. As a result, strong and sustained anti-tumour or anti-viral cytotoxic T cell responses are obtained when low-dose IMP321 is coinjected with antigens. When used alone at higher doses, systemic exposure to repeated IMP321 dosing leads to increased activated CD8 cytotoxic cells. Thus, IMP321 is now given as an add-on immunostimulatory factor the day after chemotherapy (for instance in first line chemotherapy regimens for metastatic breast cancer. More than 500 s.c. injections of IMP321 have been administered since 2005 and the product has a good local and systemic tolerability profile.
ImmuCcine® – Immunostimulatory Vaccines
Covalently linking an antigen to IMP321 in a fusion protein results in both vectorisation of the antigen to the DC as well as the immunostimulatory effect described above. This technology will make it possible to design novel therapeutic vaccines with even greater potency and efficacy.
ImmuTune® – Fine Tuning of the Immune Response
This technology uses LAG-3-specific antibodies to control the down-regulatory signal of the membrane-bound LAG-3 molecule into activated effector T cells or regulatory T cells (Tregs) to modulate the T cell response.
