At Circio we recognize the scientific and commercial value of collaborating with academic and industry partners at all stages of development; from discovery and preclinical stage assets such as circVec, our proprietary circular RNA platform, to clinical stage assets including ONCOS-102 and the TG mutant KRAS program.

Strategic focus areas

Circio´s main areas of focus are circular RNA therapeutics and immunotherapy in oncology and vaccines, with plans to expand into rare disease and cell therapy.

circular RNA – circVec platform

  • circVec is our unique, proprietary technology for in situ circRNA production, which enables enhanced and durable expression of proteins compared to conventional vectors.
  • Circio is exploring the potential of circVec in various therapeutic areas and plans to develop circRNA candidates both in-house and through partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.

We are seeking partnerhips with companies that have:

  • experience in rare disease, protein replacement and gene therapy who are interested in exploring the potential of long term high level protein expression to treat patients with monogenetic disorders.
  • vector or drug delivery technology which enables durable and tissue specific delivery of DNA and RNA therapeutics.
  • engineered or proprietary proteins or peptides suitable for vector delivery to solid tumors or other specific tissues/diseases.

ONCOS-102

  • We are looking for partners to support clinical development of ONCOS-102 either globally or regionally.
  • ONCOS-102 has demonstrated strong clinical efficacy in multiple cancer types and treatment combinations, including 35% ORR in combination with Keytruda in PD-1 resistant melanoma and 25 months mOS in combination with SoC chemotherapy in mesothelioma (vs 13 months in chemotherapy only control group). Clinical benefit of ONCOS-102 is driven by broad and powerful remodeling of the tumor microenvironment, hallmarked by increased T-cell infiltration and a shift towards pro-inflammatory immune cells.
  • An adaptive multi-cohort phase 2 trial in PD-1 resistant melanoma has been endorsed by the FDA and is ready to start with clinical collaboration partner Agenus. In this study, we will compare different treatment regimens:  (1) increased dose of ONCOS-102 monotherapy,  (2) ONCOS-102 in combination with anti-PD-1 Balstilimab, and (3) a triple combination of anti-PD-1 Balstilimab and Fc-enhanced 2nd generation anti-CTLA-4 Botensilimab. We are interested in additional partnerships to move this trial forward and to expand into additional indications and territories.

KRAS program

  • TG01 is Circio’s lead mutant KRAS immunotherapy product – a neoantigen therapeutic anti-cancer vaccine targeted at the difficult to treat RAS mutations found in over 90% of pancreatic cancer, 50% of colorectal cancer and 20-30% of all cancers.
  • A phase 1/2 clinical trial has demonstrated promising results for TG01 in combination with gemcitabine to treat patients with surgically resected pancreatic cancer. Median overall survival (mOS) for the total sample of 32 patients was 33.3 months, and 72% of patients were still alive two years after surgery.
  • Circio is now developing a next generation KRAS vaccine in combination with the adjuvant QS-21 STIMULON in the US an Europe. Investigator sponsored trials in pancreatic cancer and multiple myeloma are currently underway at the University of Kansas Cancer Center and Oslo University Hospital, respectively.
  • We are open to discuss additional partnerships for novel combination treatments with a variety of products, including chemotherapy and immunotherapy, for mutant KRAS driven tumor types.