TUCKED away in an Oxfordshire laboratory, the UK’s most prolific inventor has been busy filing a raft of patents over the past 12 months.

They are part of Dr Alex Powlesland’s pioneering work researching ways to cure cancer using the body’s own immune system.

The chemist was named on 33 international patent applications by British biotech company Immunocore last year – more than any other person in the country.

Dr Powlesland and his colleagues at Immunocore’s laboratories are based at the Milton Park Innovation Centre, near Abingdon, where they are developing different molecules to target specific cancers that are either hard to treat or have a low survival rate.

This would have benefits across a wide range of diseases, including solid tumours – which have previously proved difficult to treat with other immunotherapies – and infectious diseases including HIV, Hepatitis B and tuberculosis.

The company has several products in development but their lead programme, IMCgp100, is currently undergoing crucial clinical studies for the treatment of patients with metastatic uveal melanoma, a rare and deadly type of ocular cancer where there are currently no effective treatment options available.

Clinical results have so far been promising, with data recently presented to the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer showing a 73 per cent one-year survival rate in metastatic uveal melanoma patients treated in two Phase I studies of IMCgp100.

This represented a near doubling in the average rate of overall survival in patients compared with studies of other agents.

Dr Powlesland said: “It has been incredibly exciting and rewarding to see the dramatic improvements in the health of patients starting their treatment with IMCgp100 on our clinical trials who were very ill indeed.

“Some of the patients – not of all them – but a good many of them are now living lives that they did not expect to be able to before they began.”

The drug candidates are each designed to detect specific targets – the naturally-occurring peptides on the surface of cancer cells. It is these peptides which Immunocore is patenting.

Given that it takes 10-12 years and an average of a billion dollars to develop a successful drug and bring it to market, Dr Powlesland said patents were essential in order to protect advances in research and development and to attract investment.

He said: “There has been massive financial investment in this technology and our patent strategy is essential in protecting the products that are transforming our patients’ lives.

“This is the first time a biologic medicine like IMCgp100 has gone into clinical trials. We actively engage with the scientific community and look to share our findings in an appropriate fashion. “It is not an automatic policy to protect our peptides.

“Our findings are often published in order to speed up progress outside our company in some of these areas. We have a liberal stance wherever possible.”

The scientist, who began his studies at Oxford University more than a decade and a half ago, joined Immunocore in 2010 when they employed just 40 staff.

The company has grown to now employee more than 450.