This month, the team talks to Immunocore about their evolution at Milton Park, from Oxford University spin out to industry-leading biotech.
An industry leader
Immunocore is a global, commercial-stage biotech company with offices in Milton Park and the United States.
The team pioneered the world’s first T cell receptor (TCR) therapy and investigates transformative immunomodulating medicines which have the potential to radically improve outcomes for patients with cancer, infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases.
Part of the innovation community
Immunocore’s predecessor, the Oxford University spin out Avidex, initially chose Milton Park because of its proximity to Oxford. This allowed the new occupier to maintain links with local academic labs whilst building new relationships with other biotechs on the Park, from start ups to more established companies.
Annelise Vuidepot, Chief Technology Officer and Site Head, said: “Those early interactions on the Park were really important for us, to foster innovation and link things that are not necessarily obvious, to create new ideas.
“We started out in the year 2000 in the original wartime buildings at Milton Park and stayed there until we outgrew them. That’s when we started to grow rapidly and occupy other buildings across the Park. We’ve always found the space we’ve needed to grow here.”
A new technology
Immunocore’s early mission was to build a new platform for therapeutics. Where most companies in the field of soluble bispecifics were using antibodies to target disease, the team took a novel approach by utilising T cell receptors as an alternative scaffold.
Using this method, Immunocore was able to target a far wider range of antigens presented by tumour cells. Their technology, known as ImmTAX, involves engineering a T cell receptor to be fine-tuned to its target.
Annelise explained: “It’s very important when you target and destroy cancer cells, that the protein that’s going to recognise them doesn’t also recognise normal cells. This could lead to off-tumour activity.”
Immunocore’s first drug entered clinical trials in 2010 and went through clinical development in the ten years that followed, before being approved for commercialisation.
Diversifying treatments of the future
Initially, Immunocore’s technology was designed to develop cancer treatments, but this has broadened to include some infectious diseases and most recently, autoimmune diseases.
Since 2020, the occupier has had two programmes in the clinic for HIV and HBV and entered its first candidate drug to go into a clinical trial for type one diabetes during the past year.
Annelise concludes: “With our new programmes diversifying the types of treatments we’re able to investigate, we’re hugely excited for the next few years and the opportunities they may bring forward for patients.”
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