■ Patent registration for a vaccine design program that maximizes the immunogenicity of neoantigen candidates in cancer vaccines... A groundbreaking technology that is expected to be applied to future cancer vaccines under development.

■ "We will achieve the goal of personalized medicine and the development of treatments for intractable cancers through continuous research and development and patent applications."

Theragen Bio (CEO: Samuel Hwang), a global genomics analysis service and AI-based drug development company, announced that it completed the registration of its Korean patent related to the AI-based cancer vaccine development platform DEEPOMICS® NEO on December 6th. The patent is specifically for the 'immunogenicity prediction device for synthetic long peptides, immunogenicity prediction method, and computer program.'

The patent is related to a method for effectively measuring the immunogenicity of synthetic long peptides (SLPs), which are included in neoantigen vaccines, and designing vaccines that maximize the immunogenicity of selected neoantigen candidates through genomic analysis and experiments.

DEEPOMICS® NEO is a program that quantifies that quantifies various pieces of information, including HLA binding affinity, T cell recognition ability, cleavage prediction information, and peptide sequence information of the antigen presented by the injection drug to the patient's target cells. By analyzing this data, it can identify the optimal mutation site within the SLP sequence. The company expects that this groundbreaking technology will be an essential tool for developing personalized neoantigen vaccines in the future.

Until now, the developed programs for selecting neoantigen candidates have only provided the function of predicting neoantigens that induce the patient's immune response among the mutations discovered by genome analysis, and there has been no program that predicts the position of mutations that maximize the immunogenicity of vaccines. However, therapeutic cancer vaccines include neoantigen candidate mutations in the form of long peptide sequences, and the need for a program that predicts the position of mutations that greatly affect the immune response has been continuously raised.

In addition, for immune responses against mutations present in cancer cells to be activated, T cells must be stimulated by antigen presenting cells (APCs) and dendritic cells rather than cancer cells themselves. The development and improvement of algorithms for predicting the binding between neoantigens and major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and II, which are known as the main histocompatibility complex, play an important role in expanding and applying personalized neoantigen cancer vaccines in various cancer types in clinical settings.

Soon-Myung Paik, the CTO of Theragen Bio, said that "the development of vaccine design algorithms that maximize neoantigen immunogenicity will be a critical turning point in future neoantigen vaccine research. The cancer vaccine designed using this patent has shown exceptional immune response and therapeutic effects in preclinical models compared to competitors and is a cutting-edge technology that can be applied to all vaccine designs." He also said, "through continuous research and development, we will achieve the goal of personalized medicine and the development of a cure for intractable cancers.

Theragen Bio is currently researching and developing neoantigen cancer vaccines that selectively stimulate T cells recognizing mutations in tumors to assist in activating the immune system. The field of neoantigen cancer vaccines has garnered attention in the development of cancer therapies, as it has the potential to apply the concept of personalized medicine by selecting neoantigens based on the unique mutation information of each individual's tumor.

Meanwhile, the company has obtained two patents for DEEPOMICS® MARKER and four patents for DEEPOMICS® NEO, completing a total of six patents related to cancer vaccine platforms. In the future, they plan to continue research and development on personalized treatment targets and new drug development for each patient using the genomic big data platform, DEEPOMICS®, and innovative genomic-based solutions.