GlobeImmune® is a private biopharmaceutical company developing therapeutic vaccines called Tarmogens® for the treatment of infectious diseases and cancer. The company’s lead infectious disease product candidate, GI-5005, is a Tarmogen being developed for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C infection (HCV). The company’s lead oncology programs, GI-4000 and GI-6207, target cancers caused by mutated versions of the Ras oncoprotein and CEA expressing tumors, respectively. GI-4000 is being investigated in clinical trials for the treatment of cancers expressing mutated Ras, including non-small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer and colorectal cancer. GI-6207 is being evaluated in clinical trials in patients with CEA expressing tumors. To date, these products have been well-tolerated, and early studies indicate that they generate antigen-specific T cell immune responses and improve clinical outcomes in patients. Tarmogens are produced using fermentation processes which can be simply and economically scaled up to commercial levels.
All of the Company’s Tarmogen products are developed from its proprietary platform technology. Tarmogens, a contraction of targeted molecular immunogens, are whole, heat-killed recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast that have been engineered to produce one or more target disease proteins, or antigens, inside the yeast. These target antigens distinguish diseased cells from normal cells, and can include viral proteins, mutated proteins unique to cancer cells and proteins that are over-expressed in cancer cells. Tarmogens activate T cells capable of locating and destroying the target cancer or virally-infected cells containing the same target antigen.