The Scottish biotech, TC BioPharm, has now announced it has been selected for funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 (H2020) research and innovation programme.
The biotechnology company has been awarded a €4million H2020 grant to progress its innovative GDT (gamma-delta T) cell therapy for treatment of cancer.
This grant brings the company’s fundraising total to €25M, and it’s the largest any UK company has received from a European scheme in therapeutic healthcare products.
This funding for the Edinburgh-headquartered company will come from H2020’s SME instrument, the most competitive of the EU schemes, where fewer than 4% of companies applying to phase 2 are selected. TCB was one of only 57 projects selected out of 1514 applications from the June cut-off.
The biotech’s first-generation GDT (gamma-delta T) cell product is an ‘autologous’ cell therapy for patients with various tumours including malignant melanoma, kidney, and lung cancer. Autologous cell therapies use the patient’s own cells to treat their tumour, a costly and logistically complex approach.
The H2020 grant will allow TCB to develop a next-generation ‘allogeneic’ approach, meaning treatments can be manufactured using existing cells from donors, stored in a bio-bank. The technique is more scientifically complex because therapeutic cells will have been derived
from a single donor to treat many people.“I am excited about the prospect of combining allogeneic GDT cell therapy with our existing CAR platform; this will allow us to develop the next generation of safe, cost-effective immunotherapy for cancer,” said CBO Artin Moussavi in a statement.
TCB’s chief executive, Dr Michael Leek, concluded: “With H2020 grant funding we remain steadfastly committed to working alongside our European clinical colleagues; we share a single goal of improving cancer patient health and quality of life across EU borders. I look forward to developing our novel allogeneic GDT cell therapies with clinical partners at trial sites in Prague, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.”
