BioSeeker Group Study Progress in Cancer Vaccine Strategies

Progress in cancer vaccine strategies is continuing. Due to a harsh economical climate many companies have focused internally and on late stage candidates. This has lead to a somewhat lower activity in almost all fields of development. However, this is going to change.

(PRWEB) April 15, 2004 -- The truth is that more than a century ago, bacterial extracts were used in order to stimulate tumor-specific immune responses. Corynebacterium parvum and BCG have been utilized quite extensively as immunostimulants for the treatment of cancer. Now, BCG is registered as a first line therapy for the treatment of superficial bladder cancer.

Today, we have several hundreds of clinical trials ongoing utilizing many different strategies to combat cancer with the help of the immunesystem.

Passive immunotherapy with monoclonal antibodies directed against tumor antigens was found to induce clinical responses, which has paved the way for some of these antibodies (e.g. 17-1A antibody for metastatic colorectal cancer, anti CD20 for B cell lymphoma, and anti Her 2 neu for metastatic breast cancer). Active immunotherapy strategies have emerged and progress in the molecular characterization of human tumors and a better understanding of tumor immunology has resulted in the discovery of tumor-associated antigens (TAAs). TAA-based vaccines are at present being evaluated. It is broadly admitted that therapeutic vaccines will initially and in the near future be efficient only on a limited tumor burden. Cancer vaccines ought to be used in an adjuvant setting, for instance in order to remove residual disease after surgical treatment of the tumor. As well, in light of the fact that some of these experimental vaccines can elicit immune and clinical responses even in patients with advanced cancer, cancer vaccines can also be considered for slowing down disease progression and conserve quality of life.

The latest strategies that have emerged are to modulate immuno-surveillance, antigen processing and presentation. Although immune cells infiltrate tumors, they are frequently unable to mount a full-scale attack, because tolerance mechanisms prevent them from destroying cells that express self-antigens. Immunization of patients with cancer antigens has only been shown to cause a slight increase in the number of tumor-specific circulating lymphocyte numbers, but has not been observed to promote tumor regression. Recent studies show that administrating IL-2, IL-12 and /or INF can improve the situation by decreasing immuno-surveillance.

In this highlight study we have studied the latest progress of industry related R&D in this field.

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