OXB...a much better company than Oxford Biomedica ever was! |
What a waste of energy and money.
It makes no difference at all.
We need the phonejacker call asking to speak to the see-yeeeeyo of oxber
My Pa used to ask me why I wrote WALOB in my journal when attending pointless meetings. |
Market doesn't like companies that put their efforts into fripperies such as name/logo/etc. changing. |
 After that damp squib, 3 working days to go and my selection for bronze position is GeoVax.
Some of you will remember, but back in April Phil was awarded the thread "floppy ears and wet nose" badge (with oakleaves), which is only presented rarely for sniffing out something important which everybody else has missed.
ABL Europe (then Oxford Biomedica Europe for less than a year and presumably now just OXB squiggle) are the MVA (Modified Vaccinia Ankara vector) manufacturer for GeoVax. Basically GEO-CM04S1 for universal covid and GEO-MVA for smallpox / monkeypox as far as we are concerned.
Important to point out here that the MVA doesn't belong to OXB (nee ABL Europe) in exactly the same way that the AV in Oxford University / Astra's covid vaccine didn't belong to OXB either - but there was an awful lot of money to be made in simply manufacturing it.
GeoVax recent H1 results 6th August
Selected quotes:-
"Vaccine Manufacturing Process Development
Produced first lot of GEO-CM04S1 with a commercial manufacturing platform, a critical step toward implementation of a validated chicken embryonic fibroblast (CEF) based production system for the company’s MVA-based vaccines. This milestone marks the successful completion of the transfer and scale-up of manufacturing from the research-focused Center for Biomedicine & Genetics at City of Hope to Oxford Biomedica, the Company’s cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Procedures) manufacturing partner."
(and)
"Second Quarter Business Achievements
GEO-CM04S1
Received BARDA Project NextGen award through the Rapid Response Partnership Vehicle (RRPV) to advance development of GEO-CM04S1, GeoVax’s dual-antigen next-generation COVID-19 vaccine, in a Phase 2b clinical trial. The direct award to GeoVax of approximately $24.3 million, which may increase to as much as $45 million, will fund the manufacturing of clinical materials and support for the Phase 2b clinical trial, including regulatory activities.
Under the agreement, GeoVax will sponsor a 10,000-participant, randomized, Phase 2b double-blinded study to compare the efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity of GEO-CM04S1 with a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Preparations for the study are underway, and execution of the study will be funded by BARDA under its Clinical Studies Network.
The RRPV is a Consortium funded by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Funding for this award is provided under Project NextGen, a $5 billion initiative by HHS to advance a pipeline of new, innovative vaccines and therapeutics providing broader and more durable protection for COVID-19 than the first generation COVID vaccines and medicines."
Me again (I've finished quoting) and I realise I'm pointing out the obvious here (sorry), but in the first copied passage we learn that scale up and transfer to OXB was complete and in the second passage the amount of government money they have already been awarded to fund clinical trial material and trials. In other words that's a given and old ABL Europe / new OXB squiggle will very soon be earning a lot of money from that - possibly eventually topping what we paid for the whole company on just this contract alone.
I'd strongly recommend listening to the boss of GeoVax as he is a very good speaker. This is the latest presentation only days ago at the HCW conference you can type anything in the registration boxes (I did) well worth 20 mins of your time to hear how the US government are currently throwing money at this plus much more.
GeoVax have 3 priority programmes two of which are MVA of interest to us (universal covid and the disease formally known as monkey pox).
Both are Smallpox base jabs modified for Monkeypox with the universal covid jab being a second add-on i.e. if you opt for the covid jab you get mpox / smallpox for free.
Usual caveats here that I am an OXB squiggle armband wearer and not a scientist / medic, but it strikes me that there is potential for an awful lot of money on the table here for the manufacturer of a universal covid vaccine which also protects you from monkeypox - hence place number 3 on the countdown. |
I have to say Dom, that I'm less than thrilled.
This will cost a small fortune in changing everything which has our name / logo on it and a lot of paper stuff (admittedly that's a lot less than it used to be these days) will just go straight into the skip. They've doubtless also paid someone a small fortune to come up with the new font / squiggle.
The slight upside is it's an indication that Frank has a "big show" planned for Monday.
The downside for me (and I know that you will remember this one well) is that once British Petroleum's global ambitions reached America, they were basically forced to drop the British link as there was no way the Americans were going to allow that name after the quasi merger with a US giant.
That of course lasted until the Deepwater Horizon disaster when you couldn't stop the greatest president who ever lived from referring to BP as British Petroleum something like 15 times in one press conference.
I hope there's not an American merger coming - but I think Novo would put their foot down if it was. |
Well that should fix the undervaluing..... just what we have all been waiting for. |
Oovarvo - (vic reeves) |
Excelcia!? |
At least it's not Consignia... |
They are recognised through the industry as OXB, so makes sense to me. They obviously don’t think the Oxford name adds any prestige within biotech. ‘Oxford’ probably seems stuffy, old fashioned and ‘anti-agile217; to the Americans so probably makes sense. We are on a global footprint now, not just UK business. |
Strange rebranding? Dropping "Oxford" and "Biomedica" for it's ticker symbol? If you wanted to rebrand wouldn't you go all out for a more imaginative name? |
Massive news OXB to be rebranded as .....OXB Oxford Biomedica PLC - Oxford Biomedica rebrands as OXB #OXB @OxfordBioMedic HTTps://www.voxmarkets.co.uk/rns/announcement/fb9007be-a7ed-43e6-8720-896f246c7ded #voxmarkets |
P - I really don't know - I do wish Beam would make it clearer. I have a selection of papers to read :¬( but it will have to wait for tomorrow or later. At the moment I'm wondering whether electroporation is used to prepare the package, and the lentivirus to deliver it to the patient.
It's fabulous science though - I started on this: this morning - hard work, but fascinating stuff. I wonder where it will all lead... |
Congratulations Harry. You probably haven't noticed but on every day that since you've been opening your Advent Calendar buy volume has exceeded sales. We need you on the Board as a non exec! |
supernumerary, I think you have sorted it out - It is a 2 stage process. T cells are base-edited with various things to make them invisible to the host (to make them allogenic), then transduced with a lentiviral vector to add the anti-CD7 CAR. |
Page 121 of this presentation for example: But later on P18 mentions a Lentiviral CAR, so I think there may be a step in the process I don't understand. To put it mildly :¬) |
Plutonian - I was going by this, and several other pages on the Beam website: - under BEAM-201: 'Delivery modality: Electroporation | Ex vivo'
Maybe they changed at some time in the development? I seem to remember that Maxcyte also quotes them as an electroporation customer. |
Harry, I greatly enjoy your Advent calendar countdown and look forward to each window opening. I am sure you will reap your rewards in the fullness of time. |
Plutonian you old tease - you're not supposed to do this unless I shine the giant "P" in the sky!
(thank you though) |
Afternoon Super,
Doubtless you've seen my many warnings that I'm no scientist / doctor, but 201 is their only CAR-T. The rest of BEAM's pipeline seems to be very different from what we do.
That AI thing which is the top of any search these days was what I put into my post ("BEAM-201 is produced by base editing T cells from healthy donors at four genomic loci, and then transducing them with a lentivirus. The resulting cells are allogeneic, meaning they are universally compatible.") but I did spend some time looking at this link and pondering what it was all about.
Either search on "lentiviral" or scroll about halfway through it and you end up on a slide entitled "Allogenic multiplex edited CAR-T cell process". Look at the sequence and it says:-
Editor mRNA
gRNA #1
gRNA #2
gRNA #3
gRNA #4
Lentiviral CAR
Quite how that happens is beyond me, but tbh I don't really think it's important.
I put BEAM in the countdown (I have a lot of choices) partly because of Ygor asking about next-gen future proofing with OXB, but my honest opinion is that Novo will own OXB long before BEAM get that before the review committee for approval. |
supernumerary, with the greatest of respect, here is the correction you seek. Direct from the horses mouth...
"BEAM-201 is produced using a GMP-compliant, clinical-scale process in which T cells derived from healthy donors are simultaneously base edited at four genomic loci then transduced with a lentivirus coding for an anti-CD7 CAR"
hxxps://investors.beamtx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/beam-therapeutics-names-first-car-t-base-editing-development |
Harry - re yesterdays calendar entry, small point. I'm not convinced that Beam use viral vectors of any sort for BEAM-201 - they say they transfect the cells using electroporation (Maxcyte technology) rather than viral transduction. So I assume that oxb is providing bioreactor services for other stages of the process, and probably a lot of guidance too.
Correct me if I'm wrong! |
OK, the interim results working days countdown...
4 days to go - Kyverna Therapeutics.
OXB say very little about Kyverna. If you use the search facility on the OXB website you will find nothing. All OXB have ever said is a brief passage tucked away in the 2022 interims text to say that we signed them up sometime after 30th June 2022 to provide vectors / support for their CAR-T work.
This OXB link may or may not refer
This 3rd party link definitely refers
Why have I picked Kyverna for the number 4 spot? Their September presentation (just out)
It's brilliant and I would encourage anyone to read it, but selected points to note:-
Slide 19 - against Manufacturing and supply chain partnerships - "Oxford Biomedica supply agreement, enabling use of LentiVector"
Slide 4 - 8.3 million potential patients
Slide 6 - Zero serious reactions / complication in the clinical trials on the first 30 patients so far
Slide 9 - Note the Fast Track route to approval awards and the RMAT (regenerative medicine advanced therapy) designation (allows for accelerated approval based surrogate or intermediate endpoints).
Following slides show trial successes so far including a feature on a lady who is now fixed.
What more can we ask? |
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