Founded by scientists working at Baylor College of Medicine and selected to join Houston TX JLABS@TMC in Feb 2016, Icell Kealex Therapeutics (IKT)- also dba AnoVac Inc - is a pre-clinical/IND stage biotechnology start-up pioneering development of novel proprietary oncolytic virus based cancer immunotherapeutics. The firm's principals are developing an novel Oncolytic Vaccinia Virus variant suitable for systemic delivery. The effectiveness of oncolytic viruses is limited by the strong immune response induced by the virus, such as neutralizing antibodies and complement. To ddress that problem, principals of the firm have developed a Neutralization Escape Variant of Oncolytic Vaccinia Virus (VVNEV) platform technology. The objective is to generate a next-generation oncolytic VV with the ability of escaping the hostâs neutralization antibody response, thus allowing a systemic delivery of the recombinant virus to the tumor cells
