Argos is taking a personalised approach to R&D developing RNA-loaded dendritic cell immunotherapy products specific to the patient's immune system, designed to recognise, target, and destroy unique features of the disease. Argos' approach is based on optimising a patient's own dendritic cells to trigger a patient-specific immune response. To address the challenge of the unique genetic profile and mutations of each patient's disease, Argos loads the autologous dendritic cells with RNA, encoding the patient's unique antigens.

Through this process, dendritic cells can coordinate immune responses to recognise the complete antigenic repertoire of a particular patient's cancer or infection, resulting in a specifically personalised immunotherapy.

The goal of this contract is to determine the immunogenicity of Argos' HIV immunotherapy candidate, currently in clinical trials, and subsequently develop even more potent next-generation product candidates.

Therapies successfully identified and optimised through this contract would then be tested in a multi-centre, randomised, placebo-controlled clinical study.

The five-year contract is valued at $21.3m and Argos has partnered with a number of institutions that will participate in the development program.

The award will cover substantially all of the costs associated with the development of the next-generation HIV immunotherapies, as well as portions of costs related to Argos' current HIV candidate development.

Additionally, Argos retains commercial rights to any candidates that are developed through this funded research.

"This NIH award provides validation of Argos' approach to personalised immunotherapy, which may have strong applications not only for HIV, but also for cancer and other infectious diseases," said Dr. Charles Nicolette, Vice President of Research and Development at Argos and principle investigator for the contract.

"Our unique technology utilises patient-specific HIV antigens, allowing immune targeting of all private mutations that differ from patient to patient. This product candidate should induce immune responses perfectly matched to each individual's unique viral profile."