ImmunoFrontier, Inc. was established to crystallize the research results of Professor Shiku into practical medicine. He is a professor of the School of Medicine, Mie University, has been leading the research in the field of cancer immunology and has made much exploit as a pioneer and the leading expert especially in the area of cancer vaccine research.

Professor Shiku studied tumor-associated antigens at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and, after returning to Japan, began the research on cancer vaccines to establish antigen-specific immunotherapy as a professor of the School of Medicine, Nagasaki University. Though clinical studies for cancer vaccines are now widely conducted at so many universities in Japan, those vaccines still stay at the stage of peptide vaccines for which Professor Shiku began the clinical study five years ago. In 2003, he began the clinical study of CHP-HER2, a HER2 protein vaccine, which utilizes a new rational DDS developed in collaboration with Dr. Sunamoto, Professor emeritus of Kyoto University and is about to clarify the evidence of the safety and strong activation of immune system in breast and lung cancers.

The advantage of tumor protein vaccines is that they activate not only killer T cells which attack cancer cells but also helper T cells which direct and inspire, in the rear, the killer T cells. Antigen proteins with high molecular weight have not only multiple epitopes that stimulate killer T cells but also multiple epitopes that stimulate helper T cells, producing large effect. Therefore, it is said that peptide vaccines are monovalent and protein vaccines polyvalent. Polyvalent vaccines can be realised as a kind of gene therapy in which they are administered in the form of DNA and translated into proteins in antigen presenting cells such as dendritic cells in the body.

Professor Shiku began the research bridging to the development of cancer therapy of the next generation, as a principal investigator of the research group of medical researchers from Hokkaido University, Aichi Cancer Center, Okayama University and Kyushu University in addition to Mie University in the Cancer Translational Research Program promoted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as a part of the third 10 years comprehensive strategy against cancer, and in close relationship with Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research which is spreading the fundamental research in the field of cancer immunity in the whole world. The results of this translational research will lead to the development of new drugs and should do.

In the course of such cancer immunity research, Professor Shiku also found a unique mechanism in which regulatory T cells are activated. The regulatory T cells were clarified recently by Japanese researchers to be very important lymphocytes controlling the immune system. On the basis of this mechanism, research and development will be conducted to find epoch-making therapy for intractable immune diseases including allergy and rheumatoid.

For that purpose, we decided to establish a university spin-off drug discovery bio-venture and established and registered ImmunoFrontier, Inc. on October 5, 2004.