Immunocore Wins Emerging Star of the Year Award at the European Mediscience Awards 2015

OXFORD, England, June 12, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

Immunocore Limited, a world-leading biotechnology company developing novel biological drugs to treat cancer, viral infections and autoimmune disease, is pleased to announce that it won the "Emerging Star of the Year Award" at last night's European Mediscience Awards 2015.

Dr Eliot Forster, Chief Executive Officer of Immunocore, commented: "We are delighted to have won the Emerging Star Award. It is a great privilege, particularly given the calibre of the other nominees in this category. The past year has been transformational for Immunocore as we continued to make significant progress in the clinic with our lead candidate, IMCgp100,in advanced melanoma. Our partnerships with AstraZeneca, Genentech, GSK and Lilly are progressing well and we are rapidly expanding our wholly-owned portfolio of ImmTACs."

The European Mediscience Awards, sponsored by Kempen & Co, is the largest annual gathering of private and publicly quoted healthcare, biotech and life sciences companies in Europe. It celebrates the best in the sector and highlights the achievements of individuals and companies. The event recognizes the importance of the capital markets to fund growth and innovation.

Notes for editors 

About Immunocore 

Immunocore is one of the world's leading biotechnology companies, with a highly innovative immuno-oncology platform technology called ImmTACs. ImmTACs are a novel class of biologic drugs based on the Company's proprietary T cell receptor (TCR) technology which have the potential to treat diseases with high unmet medical need including cancer, viral infections and autoimmune diseases.  Immunocore, based on decades of world-leading scientific innovation in the discovery of HLA targets and T cell receptor technology, has a pipeline of wholly-owned and partnered ImmTAC programmes with robust clinical data, validated by collaborations with world-leading pharmaceutical companies.  Immunocore aims to leverage the utility of its platform across a wide range of indications to become a Premier Biotech company and world-leader in its field.

Immunocore's world-leading science and strong IP position has attracted major pharmaceutical companies including Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline and MedImmune, the biologics division of AstraZeneca via discovery collaborations.  Immunocore also has a clinical combination study collaboration with Medimmune and a co-discovery and co-development partnership with Lilly.  Founded in 2008 originally out of Oxford University and headquartered outside Oxford, Immunocore now has more than 150 staff. Immunocore is well funded and owned by a group of long-term private investors. For more information, please visit http://www.immunocore.com.   

About ImmTACs 

Immunocore's proprietary technology is focused on small protein molecules called ImmTACs (Immune mobilising mTCR Against Cancer) that enable the immune system to recognise and kill cancerous or bacterially/virally infected cells.

Immunocore's ImmTACs, a new class of drug with ultra-high affinity for intracellular cancer targets, are synthetic, soluble T cell receptors (TCRs) that recognise diseased cells containing disease specific targets. The ImmTACs enable circulating T-cells to selectively identify and kill diseased cells.  The ImmTAC platform is unique in its high specificity and potency and broad applicability to a wide range of intracellular targets and disease indications.  ImmTACs can access up to nine-fold more targets than typical antibody-based therapies, including monoclonal antibodies.

TCRs naturally recognise diseased cells and Immunocore's world-leading competitive advantage is its ability to engineer high affinity TCRs and link them to an antibody fragment that activates a highly potent and specific T cell response to recognise and destroy cancer cells. The most advanced ImmTAC, IMCgp100, is currently in Phase IIa clinical trials for the treatment of late stage melanoma. Immunocore has a growing internal pipeline of ImmTACs addressing many different cancer types and has developed a broad database of intracellular cancer targets.  

ImmTACs can address a significantly larger range of disease indications than currently respond to existing immuno-oncology agents and combine the characteristics of very high potency, encouraging safety and low cost of goods.

For more information, please contact:

Immunocore
Eliot Forster, Chief Executive Officer
T: +44(0)1235-438600
E: [email protected]

Consilium Strategic Communications
Mary-Jane Elliott/Jessica Hodgson/Chris Welsh/Laura Thornton
T: +44(0)203-709-5700
E: [email protected]

SOURCE Immunocore Limited