I'm going to talk about the company and our lead asset within breast cancer. Also, of course, talk about that we have actually recently announced a rights issue. ExpreS2ion Biotech is listed on Nasdaq First North Growth Market since 2016. It fully owns ExpreS2ion Biotechnologies, which is an operating company out of Denmark. This is where we have the protein expression technology ExpreS2, which was the reason for the foundation of the company back in 2010. We also have our proprietary vaccine pipeline, as well as a service business based on our protein expression technology. An important component in our setup here is AdaptVac. We own 34% of this company. It was established as a joint venture in 2017, and it has a technology called VLP, virus-like particle, which is an important component in our lead asset, the breast cancer vaccine.
This is our pipeline as we depict it today, led by ES2B-C001, a HER2-targeted breast cancer vaccine, which is in late pre-clinical stage. We're very excited about this because it's progressing towards the first clinical trials that ExpreS2ion will sponsor on ourselves. Secondly, we have a CMV cytomegalovirus vaccine that we call ES2B-I002. This is in early research in a collaboration with another Danish biotech called Evaxion. We combined their AI technology and our protein expression system to develop a novel CMV vaccine.
We have other exploratory research that I hope to tell you more about in the future here when we have the IP situation in place revolving this, all addressing multi-billion markets. Our protein expression system, I mentioned we call it ExpreS2, spelled with S2 because it's focused or based on Drosophila S2 insect cells, hence also our company name, ExpreS2ion Biotech, spelled with an S2.
The good thing is that actually the platform is clinical phase III validated. If you look at this chart from the right, we were heavily engaged in a COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic, where ExpreS2ion made the active ingredient, the RBD protein, using our ExpreS2 system and coupling it with the VLP from AdaptVac. This was out-licensed to Bavarian Nordic, who sponsored it all the way through to a clinical phase III trial that was concluded in Q3 last year. It met its primary endpoint, so we are super pleased that we are an early-stage biotech company, but we have a clinical phase III validated technology. We have other projects in clinical phase I and II. These are malaria vaccine projects, all being sponsored by University of Oxford, whom we've had a long-standing collaboration with for more than a decade.
They have a license to use our protein expression system and have developed multiple antigens, and right now are conducting six different clinical trials on four different malaria projects, and we are very thrilled that they are accelerating the clinical development now in prolongation of the pandemic. Furthermore, as I mentioned, the HER2 breast cancer, ES2B-C001, this is what I'm going to focus mainly on during my talk here. Our earlier work consists of vaccine projects within CMV, as I mentioned, but also influenza and Nipah virus, the latter three all being in grant-sponsored projects, where they're more or less fully funded actually, in case of the Nipah virus, including clinical phase I trial. That's cool. Regarding ES2B-C001, we think we have a very compelling investment case. We are targeting the HER2 breast cancer and addressing high unmet need in this very common cancer area.
The market size, in fact, exceeds EUR 30 billion in the coming years. We believe that we can gain a blockbuster size sales of about EUR 3 billion once we get there. As I mentioned, the technology revolving this vaccine is clinically phase III validated. Furthermore, as an organization, we are led by four in our management team. We have a board of directors team also of four people, and combined, all of us, we have more than 200 years of experience in taking drugs from the lab through to clinical stages. Furthermore, we have a scientific advisory board with key opinion leaders endorsing what we do in this field. Breast cancer, very common. One in eight women will be diagnosed with this disease during their lifetime. It is characterized by a HER2 self-antigen that can overexpress and lead into tumor generation, and in fact, death.
That takes its toll on more than 600,000 women every year. The competition is fierce in this arena. For more than two decades, we have seen Roche distributing Herceptin, monoclonal antibodies dominating this field, and most recently, also antibody-drug conjugates. Actually, those therapies come with some flaws, namely resistance and also compliance and cost. We believe with our approach that we can address these drawbacks. Our vaccine, as I mentioned, we make the antigen, the active ingredient, in our protein expression system. This is shown here in the middle as a HER2 extracellular domain. Basically, we can attach it to the VLP, which is a bacterial structure resembling a sphere with 180 fixed points on the surface.
The technology on this is that we can apply any protein of interest using a proprietary isopeptide bonding technology, a super glue, if you like, to, with high density, couple any protein of interest on the surface of a VLP. That makes a very effective vaccine, and this is what we have evidence with in clinical phase III, with COVID-19. We are actually creating polyclonal antibodies using this approach where we target all the four epitopes of the extracellular domain. That is important to show here because the dominating monoclonal antibodies, they really only target one epitope. Maybe that is the cause for the resistant effect that we look for, and durable effect as well. In light of time, I am going to go very quickly over our data so far. We have seen in in vitro assays, strong resistance.
In this in vitro assay, you can see on the right panel that ES2B-C001 actually inhibits growth of tumors, even in trastuzumab-resistant HER2 human breast cancer cells. We have also in an in vivo model looked at tumor growth and tumor-free done in mice. Here we have a study to the left that shows that we can completely inhibit growth of tumors over a three-month period if we inject our vaccine with an adjuvant, as shown with the red curve. On the right curve, you can see survival data. This is super interesting because in fact, we can see survival over 600 days now, which is astonishing in these mice, which normally would die after two years. Here they actually carry a tumor that actually never grows, and they survive. So we hope we can translate into a human setting as well.
We have completed the preclinical safety package here in April. Last month, we are in the middle of the CMC, the manufacturing, and we are designing the clinical setup as we speak, and progressing on that. In fact, we aim to submit our clinical trial application here in Q3, and hopefully within the next 12 months, we are in a clinical phase for real. As I mentioned, our scientific advisory board consists of multiple well-known key opinion leaders in this field, and they have all endorsed our approach with making a vaccine for this, and also our plans going forward. We are super thrilled. Plans going forward requires funding. We have just this very month announced a rights issue. From the 12th until the 27th of June, we are aiming to raise SEK 60 million . It is a 50% guaranteed rights emission, which also carries two warrants.
If you subscribe to a share, you will get a warrant, TO 10, which is exercisable in Q4 this year, and a TO 11, which is exercisable in Q3, Q4 next year. Of course, this is an upside to investors joining because it follows the plans that we have with our breast cancer vaccine. You can see 65% of the proceeds are going into the breast cancer vaccine asset and getting it into the clinical trial. Then we have 10% for the CMV vaccine, a smaller portion for the grant-sponsored projects, where they are not fully grant sponsored, as well as 20% working capital to continue the company in this exciting phase. All in all, we are super thrilled, and we hope you will join us here later this June, where we will open this subscription period. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Bent. Great presentation. I would like to start off broad, talking about vaccines. You mentioned the fact that your treatment is a cancer vaccine. When most people think of a vaccine, they think of a therapeutic or a preventative vaccine, right? Especially with infectious disease. How is this different within immune oncology?
Actually, I should have highlighted this is a therapeutic breast cancer vaccine. You will have been diagnosed with breast cancer, and it will be a treatment that potentially is combined with the monoclonal antibodies. The point is, we do not want this disease to be recurring, which is so often the case. We believe with our polyclonal antibody effect that we can generate this resistance. That is where the vaccine comes in. Actually, later, maybe we can investigate a preventive approach as well. But right now, it is for therapeutic treatment.
Okay. Well, and remaining along those tracks, the word vaccine has unfortunately come with a little bit of a stigma after the pandemic. Is that something you are worried about?
On the contrary, the pandemic has helped bringing vaccines in people's minds. If it was not for vaccines, I think we would have seen much more fatalities in the world. So I am very pleased we are in the vaccine field, and now there is more focus on that. I should also mention with respect to cancer, that they are actually using the combination of insect cell-made antigens coupling with a VLP. There are actually big pharma products out there for HPV vaccines, which actually use our own approach on this. So we are actually addressing a market which is not unknown.
Yeah.
Well, speaking about COVID, there is a question here about how the positive phase III data in COVID can be applicable to the breast cancer project.
Well, to our understanding, and our Chief Scientific Officer says it all along, we seem to be the only protein-based vaccine technology in the COVID-19 field which has shown durable protection. So we have seen in the Bavarian Nordic-sponsored clinical trials that after 12 months, you still have the same high level of neutralizing antibodies. Bear in mind that our COVID-19 vaccine actually did not include an adjuvant. We will do that in the HER2 breast cancer vaccine. But that is quite unusual in the COVID-19 space.
Unfortunately, Bavarian Nordic decided to put it on the shelf because of the commercial aspects.
Yeah.
Well, there's a question here about your partnering strategy regarding ES2B-C001. You stated that you're looking for a partner already in phase I. Why is that?
Well, when we started on this journey, we were bold in saying we are going to take it all the way to the clinical proof of concept. That's like concluding a clinical phase II trial. It's long, complicated, and cost demanding. We had to face the realities. We have initiated business development and are knocking on doors to big pharma and getting some interesting dialogues at this stage. As everybody says, data counts and clinical data are better than pre-clinical data. That's where we are leading now, going now.
Great. Well, unfortunately, that is all the time we have for now. Thank you so much for answering the questions and for your presentation, Bent.
Thank you. Thank you.