The melanoma trial is being conducted at New York University Medical Center, while the ovarian cancer vaccine trial is at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y. The trials are assessing the safety and the anti-tumor immune response of the so-called NY-ESO-1 recombinant protein cancer vaccine alone and in combination with other agents, according to the Cancer Research Institute (CRI), an organization that has recently given $450,000 to Cornell to support vaccine production at the Bioproduction Facility. The facility is a partnership between the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and Cornell. The goal of these trials is to maximize the body's immune response to the NY-ESO-1 protein.NY-ESO-1 is an antigen found in normal testis and in various tumours. The peptide vaccine stimulates the immune system against cells expressing the NY-ESO-1 antigen leading to lysis of tumour cells (no word on how it affects 'normal testis'). The vaccine isn't meant to be preventative, but rather to stimulate the body's response against an existing tumour.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Cancer Vaccine Clinical Trials
A clinical trial for a new treatment for ovarian cancer and melanoma is about to begin using a vaccine developed at Cornell University. From the press release:
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4 comments:
Just as a point of reference, clinicaltrials.gov returns 917 results for "cancer AND vaccine"; 201 for "vaccine AND melanoma"; 28 for "vaccine AND NY-ESO-1". I don't think there's anything particularly ground-breaking about this particular trial.
Vaccination with a self peptide to eliminate established disease? Good luck with that...
I thought the artificial TCR against NY-ESO-1 sounded pretty good. A MILLION times higher affinity for antigen than natural T cells???? That's gotta be good for something, if only just immunological castration...
Yes, that's true it has been tested before (this is even mentioned in the press release). My understanding was that those were early-phase, but looking at clinicaltrials.gov that seems to not be the case - Phase II trials of a NY-ESO-1 based vaccine took place in Australia and the UK a few years ago.
So you're right, this is probably more a case of hyping their production facility than anything.
Vaccination with a self peptide to eliminate established disease? Good luck with that...
I didn't look closely but I'd be amazed if the vaccine was the sole component of the therapy. I would expect that it's an adjunct therapy on top of the usual chemo, and the goal would be to enhance clearance and reduce the recurrence rate -- makes specially good sense if chemo does in fact work by triggering immune responses to cancer antigens (as has been proposed by a couple of groups recently).
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