5791 - Ixovex, a novel oncolytic E1B-mutated adenovirus

Background

There is a great demand for improved oncolytic viruses that selectively replicate inside cancer cells while sparing normal tissues. Here we describe a novel oncolytic adenovirus, Ixovex, that obtains a cancer selective replication phenotype by modulating the level of expression of the different alternatively spliced E1B mRNA isoforms.

Methods

In our work to probe the function of the E1B proteins we generated a virus mutant, the Ixovex virus, in which the SA1 3’ splice acceptor site sequence CAG:GA was mutated to CgG:GA. This single nucleotide point mutation (genomic location 3216) changed aa 399 in the E1B-496R protein from an arginine (AGG) to a glycine (gGG). IxoVex was validated for its viral replication (TCID-50 assay) and cytotoxicity (MTS assay) in a panel of normal and cancer cell lines. Animal studies for anti-tumour efficacy studies were performed in nude mice.

Results

Ixovex is a recombinant adenovirus that carries a single point mutation in the E1B-93R 3’ splice acceptor site that results in an overexpression of the E1B-156R splice isoform. Further, the mutation resulted in a loss of E1B-496R (E1B-55K) protein expression and as a consequence a failure of Ixovex to efficiently degrade the p53 tumour suppressor protein. Ixovex significantly inhibited tumour growth and prolonged survival of mice in an immune-deficient lung carcinoma tumour model. In complementation experiments overexpression of E1B-156R was shown to increase the oncolytic index of both Ad5wt and ONYX-015. In contrast to prior art viruses of similar type, Ixovex includes a functional E3B region for better in vivo efficacy. Ixovex virus, throughout this study has been proven to be by far the superior virus in potency compared to ONYX-015.

Conclusions

The decrease in toxicity and the inhibition of replication in normal cells indicate an astounding safety profile of Ixovex. The observation that the ONYX-015 virus replicated better in normal cells compared to Ixovex is intriguing considering that the ONYX-015 virus carries a large deletion that removes the coding sequences and splice signals needed to express the E1B-496R, E1B-93R and E1B-156R proteins. Ixovex significantly inhibit tumour growth in a human lung carcinoma animal model and that ONYX-015 does not.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

The authors.

Funding

IxoGen.

Disclosure

M. Anwar: Shareholder / Stockholder / Stock options: IxoGen. G. Alusi: Shareholder / Stockholder / Stock options: IxoGen. D. Oberg: Shareholder / Stockholder / Stock options: IxoGen.