Nouscom secures €120M to advance off-the-shelf cancer vaccine for Lynch syndrome

Swiss biotech Nouscom announced a €120 million (about $135 million) Series D financing round. The capital will fund a registration-enabling pivotal trial of its cancer-preventing vaccine candidate.

The candidate, NOUS-209, is an off-the-shelf immunotherapy that uses two viral vectors to deliver 209 shared frameshift peptide neoantigens. It is designed to train the immune system to recognize and destroy cells with mismatch-repair deficiency and microsatellite instability before tumors form.

NOUS-209 targets patients with Lynch syndrome, a hereditary condition that raises the risk of colorectal, endometrial and other cancers. The company said that all evaluable carriers who received the vaccine in a phase 1b/2 study remained free of advanced adenomas and colorectal cancer.

If the pivotal trial confirms these early signals, the vaccine could address an unmet preventive need for the estimated one-million U.S. individuals affected by Lynch syndrome.