Incubation in AI-enabled healthcare and drug discovery

「In basic research toward the development of personalized neoantigen cancer vaccines, our company and the Public Interest Foundation Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research successfully used our proprietary AI technology to analyze the data and predict numerous new neoantigens.」

「In the course of this work, NECVAX-NEO1 was administered to 5 patients with melanoma (malignant melanoma), renal cell carcinoma or head and neck cancer. No adverse events related to NECVAX-NEO1 administration were reported, allowing the study to proceed to high-dose administration. The immunogenicity of 68% of the selected neoantigens and neoantigen-specific immune responses in 40% of patients were also confirmed.」

「Developed technology that combines medical text analysis AI, which organizes information such as patient symptoms, test results, clinical course and prescriptions recorded in electronic medical records in chronological order, with an LLM, enabling medical documents such as referral letters to be prepared in approximately half the time previously required (Other).」

「Developed a method for efficiently identifying lung cancer antigens, which serve as markers of cancer, and immune cells capable of specifically recognizing and eliminating tumor cells by combining single-cell analysis of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) from lung cancer with an AI-based antigen prediction system. Single-cell analysis detects RNA in individual cells rather than in a tissue mass, enabling analysis of cellular characteristics and diversity (Other).」

「The company became the first Japanese company to be selected for a fund project by the international fund Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and began developing a next-generation vaccine targeting a broad range of betacoronaviruses. In April 2022, it also entered into a joint research agreement with Shionogi & Co.,Ltd. to develop a therapeutic vaccine for hepatitis B.」

「In an interim analysis of the Phase I clinical trial of TG4050, the vaccine showed a favorable safety profile to date, and the company observed early signs of immune activation and clinical efficacy resulting from TG4050.」

「Acquired initial data from a Phase I clinical trial indicating the potential of personalized immunotherapy for ovarian and head and neck cancers using TG4050, a personalized neoantigen cancer vaccine designed for each patient with AI prediction technology, which is being developed as part of efforts to strengthen the Healthcare and Life Sciences Business (Other).」

「As one way of delivering new value through the Healthcare and Life Sciences Business, developed AI technology that applies facial-recognition technology to endoscopic image analysis to detect Barrett's esophageal tumors, including esophageal cancer, which are difficult to identify through conventional endoscopic examinations, simply by connecting the technology to an existing endoscope (Social and Public Business).」

「As part of efforts to support the development of a novel coronavirus vaccine, the company applied AI prediction technology developed through work on personalized cancer immunotherapy to analyze the novel coronavirus genome and published the analysis results (Other).」

「The NEC Group views healthcare, where the use of AI technologies is expected to advance, as its next growth area and will pursue new value creation, including by promoting incubation in drug discovery-related businesses in addition to medical systems businesses using the latest technologies.」