Business
Phio Pharmaceuticals Reports Year End 2019 Financial Results and Provides Business Update
MARLBOROUGH, Mass., March 26, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Phio Pharmaceuticals Corp. (Nasdaq: PHIO), a biotechnology company developing the next generation of
About this update from Phio Pharmaceuticals Corp.
[{"type":"text","content":"MARLBOROUGH, Mass., March 26, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Phio Pharmaceuticals Corp. (Nasdaq: PHIO), a biotechnology company developing the next generation of immuno-oncology therapeutics based on its proprietary self-delivering RNAi (INTASYL™) therapeutic platform, today reported its financial results for the full year ended December 31, 2019 and provided a business update.\nLogo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/786567/Phio_Pharmaceuticals_Logo.jpg \n\"Our progress in 2019, along with the bolstering of our balance sheet, now positions us to further unlock the value of our immuno-oncology programs based on our self-delivering RNAi (INTASYL™) therapeutic platform,\" said Dr. Gerrit Dispersyn, President and CEO of Phio. \"With new data from animal studies becoming available, we look forward to continuing our R&D momentum in 2020, including the transition towards the clinical development stage of our lead candidate PH-762. We also continue to leverage our RNAi platform to establish research collaborations with leading companies and academic institutions. We recently announced a new collaboration and option agreement with Medigene AG, further building on our previously announced research collaboration with the Helmholtz Zentrum München to design and develop novel candidates in adoptive cell therapy.\"\nYear in Review and Recent Corporate Updates\nPipeline\nPhio has developed a product platform based on our INTASYL™ technology that allows easy, precise, rapid and selective non-genetically modified programming of cells. It can be used to improve immune cells used in adoptive cell transfer (ACT therapy) and to reduce immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment (TME). The use of INTASYL™ to improve ACT can be done ex vivo, during cell manufacturing. The direct therapeutic use of INTASYL™ compounds towards the TME can be done in vivo by local delivery to the tumor in the patient. Both applications of our INTASYL™ technology result in improved immunotherapy. Lead product candidate PH-762 is designed to elicit checkpoint blockade by inhibiting PD-1 receptor expression in T cells. Recent data developed in-house and with our collaborators, has shown that PH-762 can elicit PD-1 checkpoint blockade by silencing PD-1 receptor expression resulting in enhanced T cell activation and tumor cytotoxicity, and shows the potential of PH-762 in both ACT ...