Singapore, Mar 26, 2009: Australian health care company, Prima BioMed's subsidiary, Cancer Vac, has been granted a patent covering the administration of Prima’s ovarian cancer immunotherapy product CVac by the European Patent Office.

CVac is Prima BioMed’s lead product. It is a therapy treatment for ovarian cancer administered post-surgery and post-chemotherapy to delay relapse and control metastases. There is said to be a large unmet medical need for new treatments for ovarian cancer which has a very high morbidity rate, and currently there are no maintenance based therapy products commercially available.

The company is making rapid progress towards commercializing CVac into the global multi-billion oncology pharmacy market.

According to the company, the granted patent claims represent significant value for the company because they create a potential pipeline of products, as they allow the use of any antigen to be conjugated to oxidised mannan fusion protein prior to administration to dendritic cells. Currently Prima is said to be focusing the development of CVac to target the tumor specific antigen Mucin-1, an antigen highly expressed on the surface of ovarian cancer cells.

The new patent claims is said to create additional value for Prima by extending the patent life of this patent application to 2018, which provides a potential four more years of revenues for the current product under development. Also, the previously granted patent, 659768, which provides protection for the production of the CVac product will expire in 2014.

The patent will be validated in Austria, Belgium, Switzerland/Lichtenstein, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, UK, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Sweden.