Saskia and Dirk Biskup purchased all cecava shares from B. Braun Melsungen AG and are now the sole owners of cecava. In addition to preparing clinical trials, cecava is continuously working on refining and improving the vaccination technology.

cecava was founded by Saskia and Dirk Biskup together with B. Braun Melsungen AG. The objective of cecava is to plan and conduct clinical trials to prove the safety and efficacy of the personalized neoepitope peptide vaccines and obtain marketing authorization for this new treatment concept.

cecava’s co-founder Saskia Biskup (MD, PhD) developed the personalized neoepitope peptide vaccination approach to treat a relative of a close friend suffering from pancreatic cancer with a poor prognosis. Upon vaccination, this patient continued to live with a high quality of life for more than 4 years and for a total of more than 6 years since the initial diagnosis (Sonntag et al. 2018). Encouraged by this promising outcome, Saskia Biskup continued to apply personalized neoepitope peptide vaccines in her medical practice on several late-stage cancer patients with tumors of diverse origins in the setting of individual treatment attempts (individuelle Heilversuche). The treatment was generally well tolerated, with only mild and transient side effects. Additionally, the comparison with historical data suggests that vaccination improves the survival of patients with various types of cancer.