Vaccinogen

Vaccinogen originated in work done by the company's founder, Dr Michael Hanna, in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he was Director of the National Cancer Institute's Frederick Cancer Research Center in Frederick, Maryland. Hanna founded a company to develop what became OncoVAX and this was acquired by a company from Seattle called Intracel, but that company filed for bankruptcy in 2001. Vaccinogen was formed in 2007 to pick up the intellectual property and other assets from Intracel. Dr Ben Carson was chairman of the company from August 2014 until the announcement of his US presidential bid in May 2015. Carson had previously served on Vaccinogen's Medical Advisory Board.

OncoVAX manufacturing

OncoVAX employs a 'centralised' manufacturing process where the patient's tumour sample is shipped to a company-owned cGMP manufacturing facility in the Dutch town of Emmen for processing and then shipped back to the hospital for administration to the patient. In the 8701 study manufacturing was not carried out under cGMP conditions. Subsequent to 8701 a small 15-patient study was carried out with manufacturing taking place under cGMP (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT00016133). This study found that the immunogenicity of OncoVAX was unaffected by the manufacturing process.

Location

Vaccinogen is headquartered in Baltimore at 949 Fell Street near Fell's Point. The company moved there in February 2015 after previously having been located at Frederick, Maryland. The company also maintains laboratories in Dublin and its manufacturing facility at Emmen. The Emmen location of Vaccinogen B.V. was declared bankrupt in 2017.