Despite the availability of preventative vaccines, 2 billion people worldwide have been infected, with the liver-targeting, hepatitis B virus (HBV) and the numbers are increasing. On average, 10% of infected patients are unable to clear the virus and progress to a life-long chronic HBV infection. Children are at significant risk, as the progression to life-long chronic HBV infection is 90% for babies infected from mother-to-child.

There is no cure for chronic hepatitis B and up to 64 million patients will progress to severe liver-related diseases, resulting in close to 1 million annual deaths worldwide.

AVA2100 – treatment therapy for cHBV

Avalia’s lead programme, is focused on a necessary cure for individuals infected with chronic HBV. It aims to provide superior activation of the innate and adaptive immune system, to overcome immune tolerance and generate a highly targeted immune response against HBV in the liver to eliminate infected cells – the desired immune response to achieve a functional cure.

Because Avalia’s immune therapies are liver-targeting, they also generate memory T cells in the liver. These cells have the long-term ability to seek and eliminate HBV-infected cells. This family of T cells, referred to as liver tissue-resident memory T cells have been reported in recent scientific journals as the potential key to the clearance of HBV.

Unfortunately cancer continues to be the second leading cause of death globally. In 2015, there were approximately 8.8 million deaths from cancer. Avalia’s preclinical cancer program focuses on the development of therapeutic vaccines for the treatment of solid tumors and virus-driven cancers. Avalia’s vaccines elicit natural killer T cells to drive a potent and targeted immune response against tumors, a mechanism complementary to other treatment approaches.

AVA1200 – treatment therapy for solid tumors

Avalia’s solid tumor preclinical program focusing on eradication of solid tumors has shown meaningful tumor regression and survival benefits in models of melanoma, glioblastoma and lung cancer and also in combination with market approved therapeutic agents and others in development.

Our strategy is to use Avalia vaccines as a monotherapy to treat pre-malignant and early stage cancers. Avalia vaccines also have a role in combination therapies with other cancer fighting therapies for late stage cancers by strengthening or priming the body’s natural immune response to improve response rates of non-responder patients.