Quest PharmaTech Inc. announced that is has entered into a license agreement with Oncovir, Inc. (Washington, DC) to evaluate the clinical utility of combining Quest's antibody immunotherapy technology with Oncovir's immune activator "Hiltonol(R) " in a twenty patient ovarian cancer Phase II clinical trial. The trial will be conducted in Rome, Italy under the direction of Professor Roberto Angioli of University Bio Medico. Oncovir will provide the needed drug, appropriate technical expertise and relevant data to support the regulatory process necessary to conduct the clinical trial.

Hiltonol(R) (Poly ICLC) is a TLR-3 agonist that has been shown to have specific anti-tumor and anti-viral actions. It is emerging as a promising component to enhance activity of multiple cancer and HIV vaccines. As a result, Oncovir currently has over two dozen recently completed or ongoing Phase I or II investigator initiated, collaborative clinical trials, using Hiltonol(R) alone or in combination with other agents.

Several hundred patients have been safely treated to date and another dozen trials are in various stages of planning or submission. This planned clinical study is part of Quest's strategy of conducting three risk mitigating clinical trials with Oregovomab in combination with chemotherapy to confirm its ability to generate a clinically meaningful antigen specific T-cell response in both ovarian cancer patients, and also other CA125 associated cancer settings, such as select patients with pancreatic cancer. Quest seeks to optimize the utility of cancer immunotherapy through artful combination of its antibodies with cytotoxic agents and promising additional immune adjuvants.

The first two clinical trials in this initiative are already underway at clinical centers in Italy and the U.S.