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Lassa Hemorrhagic Fever (LHF) is a serious disease caused by infection with Lassa virus (LASV) – highly prevalent in West Africa and spreading globally. LASV is associated with high morbidity and mortality rates, annually infecting 100,000 to 300,000 individuals and causing 5,000 deaths. Developing prophylactics and treatment for LASV is difficult due to challenges in inducing neutralizing antibodies and producing their target, the LASV glycoprotein trimer (GPC).

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) is an attractive new therapeutic approach for treating various cancers. ACT has recently demonstrated a high degree of efficacy when treating patients with hematological malignancies. However, to date, no effective Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CAR) T cell therapy exists for solid tumors.

Mesothelin is a cell surface protein that is highly expressed in aggressive cancers, such as malignant mesothelioma, ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, bile duct carcinoma and gastric cancer.  Because of this selective expression, mesothelin is an excellent candidate for targeted therapeutics, such as monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and chimeric molecules.  Current anti-mesothelin therapeutic mAb candidates bind to an epitope in Region I of mesothelin.  Unfortunately, Region I contains the interaction site MUC16/CA125, a mesothe

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. The overall 5-year survival rate is 8.5%. Glypican-1 (GPC1) is a cell surface heparan sulfate proteoglycan protein overexpressed in pancreatic cancer. Due to preferential expression, GPC1 represents a potential candidate for targeted therapy for pancreatic cancer and other GPC1-expressing cancers, such as prostate.

Neuroblastoma is a rare pediatric cancer that affects one in every hundred thousand children under the age of fifteen in the United States. Current standards of care  are chemotherapy and surgery, followed by stem-cell treatments, radiation and anti-ganglioside antibody therapy, which yield an average three-year survival rate of 10-45%. This demonstrates a need for more effective therapies.

Bacterial spores can be modified to display molecules of interest, including drugs, immunogenic peptides, antibodies and other functional proteins of interest (such as enzymes).  The resulting engineered bacterial spores can provide many useful functions such as the treatment of infections, use as an adjuvant for the delivery of vaccines, and the enzymatic degradation of environmental pollutants.

Neuroblastomas are the most common extracranial solid tumors in pediatric patients, with 700-800 new cases annually in the United States. Metastatic neuroblastomas have a five-year survival rate of 50% and account for 15% of all pediatric cancer deaths. As such, more effective treatments against high-risk neuroblastomas are urgently needed.

The National Cancer Institute seeks parties to license human monoclonal antibodies and immunoconjugates and co-develop, evaluate, and/or commercialize large-scale antibody production and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) xenograft mouse models. An advantage of these monoclonal antibodies as a potential therapeutic is their specificity, which would reduce deleterious side-effects. HCC is the most common form of liver cancer, and is among the more deadly cancers in the world. There is a need for new treatments that can be successfully applied to a large population of patients.

Mesothelin is a cell surface protein that is highly expressed in aggressive cancers such as malignant mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, bile duct carcinoma and gastric cancer. As a result, mesothelin is an excellent candidate for tumor targeted immunotherapeutics. However, the antibodies against mesothelin that are available for clinical trials are of murine origin. These antibodies have the potential to elicit immune responses in patients, which may adversely affect the ability to provide patients with repeated doses.

The National Cancer Institute Laboratory of Molecular Biology seeks parties for collaborative research to co-develop and commercialize antibody drug/toxin conjugates as liver cancer therapy and diagnostics.