third international conference cancer vaccine

page 121 of the document

http://www.expert-reviews.com/doi/pdf/10.1586/erv.09.157

Ronald Rooke (Transgene SA, Strasbourg Cedex, France) reported the development of TG4010, a cancer vaccine target?ingmucin-1-expressingtumors [10]. TG4010 is a recombinant viral vector, based on an attenuated strain of vaccinia virus, expressingboth MUC1 and IL-2. Rooke provided an update on a randomized Phase IIb trial evaluatingTG4010 as an adjunct to chemotherapy in 148 patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer. The progression-free survival after 6 months was 44% in the TG4010 plus chemotherapy arm, compared with 26% in the control chemotherapy arm. After a median follow-up of 17.1 months, an overall survival advantage of 39.4 versus 22.7% was observed. These apparent clinical benefits did not reach statistical significance (p > 0.05), but the chosen primary end point of 40% progression-free survival after 6 months was met. Exploratory biomarker analyses identified patients with nor?mal baseline levels of activated natural killer cells as a possible target group. This subpopulation had a favorable clinical outcome after TG4010 therapy compared with controls on all relevant readouts, includinga 6 month increase in median survival (17.1 vs 11.3 months).

Peptide vaccination combined with chemotherapy
From a clinical point of view, one of the most strikingdevelop?ments within cancer vaccine research is the shift towards com?biningvaccines with conventional therapies. At CVADD 2009, the presentations clearly showed that previous scepticism towards combingvaccines with chemotherapy is beingreplaced by discus?sions on how to combine them. The TG4010 trials described above incorporated vaccination in standard cisplatin and gem?citabin schedules.