AACR poster session review

We were thrilled to present a poster of our work at AACR. It is one of the biggest conferences on cancer research, with 22,000 visitors. To get accepted, we had to write an abstract, which was reviewed, and we needed to be sponsored by an existing member. For us this was Dr. Sanjeev Vasudevan, whom we work with at Texas Children’s. Our poster gave a brief overview on our platform and the work we have done on Hepatoblastoma (liver cancer in children).

Each poster is assigned a spot in a section, and ours was among other oncolytic viral therapies (OVT). In total there were 26 posters for OVTs including our own. We analyzed these to evaluate trends and competitors. We found DNA viruses were the most common, especially vaccinia virus (10) and adenovirus (9). Some therapies used selective infection using retargeting. Some used selective replication, however we were the only company showing a therapy using both. Most others are focused on recruiting the immune system to help and kill cancer cells, which is much more complicated. After speaking to several people in the field, we learned that the common belief is that making a virus which is both safe and replicates fast enough to kill cancer outright has proven to be very difficult. This is exactly what we are doing 🙂

Besides meeting other poster presentations in the oncolytic viral therapy field, we also visited booths of our current suppliers, met with potential new suppliers and started conversations with future partners.

We had a great time at the conference and are working hard on all the follow ups.