Commercial agreement announced for cancer vaccine product candidate.

2004 APR 7 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Prima BioMed Ltd, subsidiary CancerVac, and Biomira Inc. (BIOM) announced a commercial agreement for the development and commercialization of CancerVac's most advanced cancer vaccine product candidate.

Biomira will provide CancerVac with access to its licensed exclusive worldwide rights related to a protein called MUC1 in relation to CancerVac's Mannan-MUC1 fusion protein therapeutic vaccine.

The Biomira MUC1 patent portfolio includes certain rights to patents held by Cancer Research Technology Limited of London, U.K., which are essential for the development and commercialization of CancerVac's Mannan-MUC1 fusion protein used for cancer immunotherapy.

CancerVac has developed an immunotherapy that utilizes the patient's own dendritic cells treated ex-vivo to stimulate a cellular immune response following re-injection of the cells into the patient.

CancerVac plans to initiate patient recruitment into a Phase IIa trial in patients with metastatic ovarian cancer in the second quarter of 2004.

In partial consideration for the license rights provided by Biomira to CancerVac, Biomira acquired a 10 per cent equity stake in CancerVac, and a seat on the board of CancerVac.

The agreement provides that Biomira has the sole option of licensing the exclusive worldwide commercialization rights (excluding Australia and New Zealand) to this product candidate following conclusion of the Phase IIa trial in ovarian cancer.