Cancer vaccine developers Madiha Derouazi and Elodie Belnoue laureates of the European Inventor Award 2022
New medical platform to make therapeutic cancer vaccines that help the immune system recognise and destroy cancer cells in the body of a patient
The European Patent Office (EPO) distinguished Swiss biotechnologist Madiha Derouazi and French immunologist Elodie Belnoue with the European Inventor Award 2022 in the "SME" category. The pair have developed a vaccine assembly platform called KISIMA to produce vaccines for treating different types of cancer, offering new hope in the fight against the disease.
Madiha Derouazi and Elodie Belnoue (Switzerland/France), winners of the European Inventor Award 2022 in the SMEs category, honoured at the hybrid award ceremony on 21 June 2022.
Photo copyright European Patent Office
"This remarkable invention has the potential to save many lives," says António Campinos, President of the European Patent Office. "It may have at one point seemed impossible but Madiha Derouazi and Elodie Belnoue boldly pushed forward with ingenuity and perseverance to create a new way of treating cancer."
The Swiss-French team were honoured at the European Inventor Award 2022 ceremony, a hybrid event that watched online by a worldwide audience. The Award is one of Europe's most prestigious innovation prizes and is presented annually to outstanding inventors from Europe and beyond who have made an exceptional contribution to society, technological progress and economic growth.
Using vaccines to treat cancer
While many vaccines are used to prevent disease, therapeutic vaccines are administered to treat a disease once it has taken hold. Cancers often suppress the body's own immune response, so the task of a therapeutic cancer vaccine is to help the immune system recognise and destroy the cancer cells. Previous efforts to develop cancer vaccines have either not been able to provoke a strong immune response or the vaccines have only been effective in a few patients.
Derouazi and Belnoue's invention assembles three essential components of a vaccine into one single protein, meaning the platform can be used to produce vaccines for different types of cancer. They are intended for use alongside treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Derouazi, Belnoue and their team are now using the KISIMA platform to produce their first vaccine, which is designed to treat metastatic colorectal cancer. The vaccine is currently in early-stage human trials with tests being carried out on patients both with the vaccine on its own and in combination with immune-boosting drugs.
The trials represent a big step for Derouazi, who became interested in cancer vaccines during her post-doc. She applied for a patent for the platform in 2012, when working at the University of Geneva, and set up a spin-out company, AMAL Therapeutics, to build and commercialise it. Belnoue was her first employee. In July 2019, pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim acquired AMAL Therapeutics for EUR 425 million, the largest biotech company exit in Europe that year.
For Derouazi, the focus of her research has always been on the patients. "The most important moment in my life personally, and also for AMAL Therapeutics and all the team in general, was on July 30 2019 when the first patient was treated with our vaccine. We received a text message at 10pm saying that the patient had been treated, and I was crying. ‘AMAL' means ‘hope' in Arabic, and this is what we would like to bring to cancer patients."
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