Overview:
Dei BioPharma's seven new US patents cover off-the-shelf mRNA cancer vaccines matched to a tumour's molecular changes rather than the organ it started in.
KAMPALA — Ugandan biotechnology firm Dei BioPharma has filed seven patent applications in the United States covering a modular range of messenger RNA (mRNA) cancer-vaccine technologies, the company has said.
The applications, which name Dei BioPharma founder Dr Matthias Magoola as inventor, were lodged with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) between 18 and 25 August. They span a range of tumour targets, from recurrent fusion junctions and driver mutations to viral oncoproteins, alongside an overarching platform design.
Dei BioPharma describes the work as an approach in which pre-manufactured vaccine candidates are directed at molecular changes that recur across defined groups of patients. The company says the programme places a locally anchored effort within the wider global push to develop off-the-shelf cancer immunotherapies, and characterises it as among the first such initiatives led by an African-based firm.
Under the approach, patients would be matched to a candidate by the tumour’s molecular alteration and, where relevant, by human leukocyte antigen (HLA) type, rather than by the organ in which the cancer originated.
“Our ambition is global and deliberately long-term: to develop a modular immune platform capable of addressing the molecular drivers behind an expanding share of human cancers,” Dr Magoola said in a statement.
“These filings are an effort to build, target by target, the scientific and manufacturing foundation that will make many cancers preventable and controllable, or less likely to return.”
The seven applications cover a BCR-ABL fusion-junction target linked to fusion-positive leukaemia; an EGFRvIII deletion-junction target relevant to certain glioma subgroups; an NPM1 target in molecularly defined acute myeloid leukaemia; a multiplex RAS-hotspot design aimed at RAS-mutant tumours across several organs; a TP53 R175H target; sequence-attenuated HPV16/18 cassettes addressing HPV-driven cancers; and an omnibus platform architecture intended to support multiple target-specific products.
Dr Magoola has previously co-authored peer-reviewed work proposing a strict filter for candidate targets: that a target should recur within a defined subgroup, be absent from essential normal tissue, and be naturally presented by tumour cells.
The filings are the latest in a series of intellectual-property milestones for Dei BioPharma and Dr Magoola, who the company says holds more than 100 patents filed with the USPTO. About 70 have so far been published.
Over the past two years, the USPTO has accepted applications from the firm for a universal mRNA cancer-vaccine platform and a lower-cost immune therapy. In July, the US Food and Drug Administration provided preliminary comments on PSI-033, a proposed biosimilar to the cancer drug Yervoy.
Founded by Dr Magoola in 2014, Dei BioPharma operates a manufacturing complex at Matugga in Wakiso District, near Kampala, which was inaugurated in 2021 and which the company says is among the largest facilities of its kind on the continent. It was licensed by Uganda’s National Drug Authority in 2024 to manufacture a wide range of medicines.
The firm says it aims to produce vaccines, biologics, biosimilars and mRNA-based therapeutics for African and global markets, with the stated goal of making biological drugs affordable to the large share of the world’s population it says currently cannot access them.
Dei BioPharma said it planned to prioritise candidates according to how common a target is, biological validation, unmet medical need, manufacturability and a feasible clinical pathway, with particular interest in settings such as minimal residual disease and recurrence prevention.