Microba Life Sciences Limited announced that its Immuno-oncology Program has completed its first animal studies producing positive results. This experiment was designed to assess Microba's therapeutic leads in a mouse model of melanoma, one of the most common forms of cancers with a large number of annual deaths. The results demonstrated a significant reduction in tumour volume for mice treated with an immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) together with Microba's therapeutic leads, when compared to control mice that received ICI therapy alone.

These first results support an accelerated program of work elucidating the mechanism of action and enabling a clinical study in melanoma patients. While there have been considerable advances in the treatment options for melanoma, improvement of overall response rates and survival remain meaningful areas of opportunity. Furthermore, ICIs are used in a range of cancers beyond melanoma including lung, head and neck, breast, colon, cervical, and other types of cancer.

There is an increasing body of literature supporting a key role for the microbiome in cancer. Cancer immunotherapy, and more specifically a class of drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) have become standard of care for a range of tumour types. Despite their impact on patients, on average 70% of patients do not respond to these drugs leaving a large underserved patient population.

Differences in the microbiomes of responders and non-responders have been observed in international studies, and treatment of the microbiome using fecal microbiome transplant has demonstrated the ability to turn ICI non-responders into responders. This presents an important opportunity to identify the key components of the microbiome which drive that effect and develop an effective adjuvant therapy to improve ICI response. Using the company's data-driven Therapeutic Platform, Microba has identified a number of lead microbial species that may underpin clinical ICI response.

In order to assess the potential efficacy of these species, selected strains were assessed in an ICI refractive mouse melanoma model, for their ability to reduce tumour burden. The data just completed demonstrated a significant reduction in tumour size in mice treated with Microba's therapeutic leads together with ICI treatment. These preliminary animal model results support further acceleration of pre-clinical work towards clinical testing.