OSE Immunotherapeutics Appoints its International Scientific Advisory Board

• The Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) combines the expertise of renowned scientific and international key-opinion leaders in the fields of immunology, immuno-oncology, inflammation and immunotherapy.
  
• The SAB will work with the Company’s leadership team and advise its Board of Directors on its scientific, medical, translational and developmental strategy.
  
• The SAB members include Pr. Wolf-Hervé Fridman (Université de Paris), Dr. Sophie Brouard (CRTI, Nantes), Dr. Bernard Malissen (CIML, Marseille), Pr. Miriam Merad (Mount Sinai, New York), Pr. Charles Serhan (Harvard, Boston) and Dr. Jennifer Wargo (MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston).
  

NANTES, France, June 09, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OSE Immunotherapeutics SA (ISIN: FR0012127173; Mnemo: OSE) today announces the appointment of six leading international experts to its newly formed Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) to guide the Company in its next phases of growth and scientific orientations.

“We are proud to have gathered this team of independent world-renowned key-opinion leaders in immunology, immuno-oncology and inflammation,” commented Nicolas Poirier, Chief Scientific Officer of OSE Immunotherapeutics. “Since OSE’s inception, it has been an incredible journey at the forefront of immunology for translating our scientific discoveries into first-in-class innovative immunotherapy treatments against cancers, autoimmune or inflammatory diseases. We will now benefit from their outstanding and highly complementary expertise to further develop our R&D capabilities and nurture the science developed by OSE.”

Dominique Costantini, Chief Executive Officer of OSE Immunotherapeutics, adds: “We are very pleased and honored to bring together experts with such scientific high level and strategic insight in immunology to guide the Company in its scientific orientations. Together with the OSE team, this Board will help addressing novel issues and challenges pertaining to our current and future research to prepare the Company’s new phase of growth focused on bringing new entities into our portfolio and advancing our preclinical and diversified first-in-class products in immuno-oncology and immunology & inflammation.“

The SAB, chaired by Pr. Wolf-Hervé Fridman who will lead the Board's reflections and discussions, will comprise the followings:

Prof. Wolf-Hervé Fridman, MD, Chairman
Professor Emeritus of Immunology at the ‘Université de Paris’ Medical School in Paris, France
Dr. Fridman’s research focused on the analysis of the tumor microenvironment. Since 2005, his studies have changed the paradigm of host/cancer interactions by demonstrating that the ‘immune contexture”, taking into account the functionality, the location and the density of the immune infiltrate in colorectal tumors, is the major prognostic factor for human cancers. He is involved in the development of bioinformatic tools to quantify cells of the tumor microenvironment which are being successfully applied to predict prognosis and immunotherapeutic responses in Renal Cell Cancers, Colorectal Cancers or Sarcomas. One major achievement is the establishment of an immune classification of soft tissue sarcoma tumors that allowed to demonstrate that Tertiary Lymphoid Structures (TLS) and B cell signatures, better than T cells, predicted favorable clinical outcome and therapeutic response to anti-PD- 1 therapy in patients. These findings were recently extended to other cancers treated with immune check-point blockers showing that plasma cells generated inside TLS produce anti-tumor antibodies associated with patient’s response to immunotherapy. They open the way for novel immune-based tools for efficient prognosis and therapy of cancers.

Dr. Sophie Brouard
Immunologist and Doctor in veterinary sciences, Director of Research at the Institut National de la Santé et Recherche Médicale (INSERM, National Institute for Health and Medical Research) in Nantes, France
Dr. Sophie Brouard is Director of Research in the INSERM unit located in Nantes (France) and is working in immunology (auto-immune diseases and transplantation). She is an immunologist interested in fundamental and translational questions on the process of inflammation, chronicity, rejection and tolerance. Previously, she served as Director of the Centaure national RTRS (Réseau Thématique de Recherche et de Soins) transplantation network in France. Dr. Brouard received the Bronze medal from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 2004, the price from “Medicine Academy” in 2012, the medal of innovation of the CNRS in 2020 and the “Trophée” of “Academy-Biotech partnership” from the Nantes University in 2021.
She funded three companies, TclandExpression, Effimune and BioMadvanced.

Dr. Brouard participates and is co-authors of 11 patents. She published around 200 scientific papers (h-factor = 43).

Bernard Malissen, PhD
Group Leader at Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy and Founding-Director of Center for Immunophenomics, Marseille, France
Dr. Bernard Malissen pioneered the use of gene transfer approaches to dissect the function of Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) molecules. He also succeeded reconstructing a full T cell antigen receptor (TCR) complex and demonstrated that the present-day signaling subunits associated with antigen receptors stem from a common primordial building block. He provided the first evidence for chromosomal inversion during TCR gene rearrangements.

His team was also the first to elucidate the atomic structure of an alloreactive TCR in complex with its peptide-MHC ligand, providing a molecular explanation for the basis of transplant rejection and TCR binding-degeneracy. His recent interests extend to dendritic cells and macrophages, leading him to disentangle their functional complexity primarily in the skin. To make sense of the complexity of the signal transduction networks involved in T cell activation, he recently used “omic” approaches to provide a systems level picture of the TCR signal transduction network and of its tuning by costimulatory and coinhibitory receptors.

Bernard Malissen published 400 scientific papers, (h-factor of 94) and ranked for the last 5 years among the most highly cited researchers in Immunology.

Dr. Myriam Merad, MD, PhD
Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the Director of the Mount Sinai Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC), US
Dr. Merad is an internationally acclaimed physician-scientist and a leader in the fields of dendritic cell and macrophage biology with a focus on their contribution to human diseases. Dr. Merad identified the tissue resident macrophage lineage and revealed its distinct role in organ physiology and pathophysiology. She established the contribution of this macrophage lineage to cancer progression and inflammatory diseases and is now working on the development of novel macrophage-targeted therapies for these conditions. In addition to her work on macrophages, Dr. Merad is known for her work on dendritic cells, a group of cells that control adaptive immunity. She identified a new subset of dendritic cells, which is now considered a key target of antiviral and antitumor immunity.

Dr. Merad leads the Precision Immunology Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine (PrIISM) to bring immunology discoveries to the clinic. PrIISM integrates immunological research programs with synergistic expertise in biology, medicine, technology, physics, mathematics and computational biology to enhance our understanding of human immunology. She also founded the Human Immune Monitoring Center at Mount Sinai, one of the world’s most sophisticated research centers, which uses cutting-edge single-cell technology to understand the contribution of immune cells to major human diseases or treatment responses.

Dr. Merad has authored more than 200 primary papers and reviews in high profile journals. Her work has been cited several thousand times. She receives generous funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her research on innate immunity and their contribution to human disease, and belongs to several NIH consortia. She is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the recipient of the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology. She is the President-elect of the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). In 2020, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her contributions to the field of immunology.

Prof. Charles N. Serhan, PhD, DSc
Pr. Serhan is the Simon Gelman Professor of Anaesthesia (Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology) at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Oral Medicine, Infection and Immunity at Harvard School of Dental Medicine, US
He is Director of the Center for Experimental Therapeutics and Reperfusion Injury at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Co-Director of the Brigham Research Institute. Charles received a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from Stony Brook University followed by a Doctorate in experimental pathology and medical sciences from New York University School of Medicine. He was a visiting scientist and postdoctoral fellow at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm with Professor Bengt Samuelsson (Nobel Laurate Medicine 82). In 1987, he joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School and in 1996 received the honorary degree from Harvard University.

Pr. Serhan has experience leading multidisciplinary research teams as PI/PD for several NIH supported Program Project Grants and a P-50 Center Grant. He is currently Program Director of the Program Project entitled “Resolution Mechanisms in Acute Inflammation: Resolution Pharmacology” (P01-GM095467).

He received several research awards including an NIH MERIT and recent international awards: 2016 Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine, International Eicosanoid Research Foundation’s 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award, the American Society of Investigative Pathology 2018 Rous Whipple Award, the 2018 British Pharmacology Society’s Gaddum International Prize and Award Lecture, and the 2019 Honorary Lifetime Award, Society for Leukocyte Biology, for excellence in leukocyte biology research.

His h-index is 172 in google scholar.

Dr. Jennifer Wargo, M.D., M.M.Sc.
Professor of Genomic Medicine & Surgical Oncology, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston
After completing her medical degree, she entered surgical residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School where she became interested in the biology and treatment of cancer. During her training, she completed 2 fellowships in surgical oncology with a focus on immunotherapy for cancer.

Dr. Wargo was recruited to the Division of Surgical Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital in July 2008 and had an active research laboratory focusing on melanoma tumorigenesis and immunotherapy for cancer. One exciting finding involved data describing the effect of BRAF-targeted therapy on tumor antigen expression in melanoma as a basis for combining targeted therapy and immunotherapy in the treatment of this disease. Dr. Wargo validated those findings in patients treated with BRAF inhibitors. She has continued critical studies to better understand the effects of BRAF inhibition on immune responses in melanoma and established a unique set of serial tumor biopsies and blood samples from patients enrolled in clinical trials on BRAF inhibitors. Through analysis of these samples, she contributed significantly to the world literature regarding resistance mechanisms and the effect of targeted therapy on anti-tumor immunity.

Dr. Wargo was recruited to MD Anderson Cancer Center in September 2013 to continue this work and to build a program to collect serial biopsies in patients with melanoma and other cancers on targeted therapy and immunotherapy, and to better understand responses to therapy and to develop novel strategies to combat resistance.

ABOUT OSE Immunotherapeutics
OSE Immunotherapeutics is an integrated biotechnology company focused on developing and partnering therapies to control the immune system for Immuno-Oncology and Immuno-Inflammation. Its balanced first-in-class clinical and preclinical portfolio has a diversified risk profile:

Immuno-Oncology first-in-class products

• Tedopi^® (innovative neoepitope combination): the Company’s most advanced product; positive results for Phase 3 trial (Atalante 1) in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer patients in secondary resistance after checkpoint inhibitor failure.
  Other ongoing combination trials sponsored by cooperative clinical research groups in oncology:
    Phase 2 in pancreatic cancer (TEDOPaM), sponsor GERCOR.
    Phase 2 in ovary cancer, in combination with pembrolizumab (TEDOVA), sponsor ARCAGY-GINECO.
    Phase 2 in non-small cell lung cancer in combination with nivolumab, sponsor Italian foundation FoRT.
• BI 765063 (OSE-172, anti-SIRPα mAb on CD47/SIRPα pathway): developed in partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim in advanced solid tumors; positive Phase 1 dose escalation results of BI 765063 in monotherapy and in combination with ezabenlimab (PD-1 antagonist); ongoing expansion Phase 1; BI sponsored international phase 1b clinical trial ongoing in combination with ezabenlimab alone or with other drugs in patients with recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
• OSE-279, anti-PD1 – advanced preclinical stage.
• BiCKI^®: bispecific fusion protein platform built on the key backbone component of anti-PD1 combined with a new immunotherapy target (for example: BiCKI^®-IL7, preclinical stage) to increase anti-tumor efficacy.
  

Immuno-Inflammation first-in-class products

• OSE-127/S95011 (humanized monoclonal antibody antagonist of IL-7 receptor): developed in partnership with Servier; positive Phase 1 results; ongoing Phase 2 in ulcerative colitis (sponsor OSE) and ongoing Phase 2a in Sjögren’s syndrome (sponsor Servier).
• FR104 (anti-CD28 monoclonal antibody): licensing partnership agreement with Veloxis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in transplantation; ongoing Phase 1/2 in renal transplant (sponsored by the Nantes University Hospital); Phase 1 ongoing in the US (sponsor Veloxis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.); Phase 2 planned in an autoimmune disease indication.
• OSE-230 (ChemR23 agonist mAb): preclinical stage therapeutic agent with the potential to resolve chronic inflammation by driving affected tissues to tissue integrity.
  

CoVepiT: a prophylactic second-generation vaccine activating cytotoxic T lymphocytes against COVID-19, developed using optimized epitopes from SARS-CoV2 viral proteins, epitopes non impacted by multi-variants. Shows good tolerance and very good level of T cell immune response. In clinical testing, a long-term memory response was confirmed at 6 months.

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This press release contains express or implied information and statements that might be deemed forward-looking information and statements in respect of OSE Immunotherapeutics. They do not constitute historical facts. These information and statements include financial projections that are based upon certain assumptions and assessments made by OSE Immunotherapeutics’ management in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends, current economic and industry conditions, expected future developments and other factors they believe to be appropriate.

These forward-looking statements include statements typically using conditional and containing verbs such as “expect”, “anticipate”, “believe”, “target”, “plan”, or “estimate”, their declensions and conjugations and words of similar import. Although the OSE Immunotherapeutics management believes that the forward-looking statements and information are reasonable, the OSE Immunotherapeutics’ shareholders and other investors are cautioned that the completion of such expectations is by nature subject to various risks, known or not, and uncertainties which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of OSE Immunotherapeutics. These risks could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed in or implied or projected by the forward-looking statements. These risks include those discussed or identified in the public filings made by OSE Immunotherapeutics with the AMF. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. This press release includes only summary information and should be read with the OSE Immunotherapeutics Universal Registration Document filed with the AMF on 15 April 2022, including the annual financial report for the fiscal year 2021, available on the OSE Immunotherapeutics’ website. Other than as required by applicable law, OSE Immunotherapeutics issues this press release at the date hereof and does not undertake any obligation to update or revise the forward-looking information or statements.