Personalized Vaccine For Ovarian Cancer Shows Significant Survival Rate

A personalized vaccine which boosts a patient’s own immune system nearly doubled the number of women surviving ovarian cancer for two years, reports a new study.

This Ludwig Cancer Research study showed that a new type of personalized cancer vaccine induces novel, potent and clinically effective immune responses in patients receiving a combination of standard therapies for recurrent, stage III and IV ovarian cancer.

These researchers created "personalized" vaccines using the patient's tumor and dendritic cells from her blood.

“The patients who received the vaccine mounted an immune response against their own tumors,” said these researchers.

Although this study was not a randomized, placebo-controlled trial, these researchers compare their results with historical patient data of ovarian cancer recurrence and the outcomes recorded in their practice.

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"At one year, 100% of the patients in cohort 3 were alive, as compared to 60% when patients receive just bevacizumab and cyclophosphamide, but no vaccine," said Dr. Lana Kandalaft, who is an adjunct researcher at Ludwig Lausanne.

Dr. Kandalaft said, “A combination of chemotherapy and surgery is usually the standard of care in the primary setting, but 85 percent of patients recur and are left with few other curative options.”

This study conducted at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania also found that the vaccine--made from a processed sample of a patient's tumor and delivered via that patient's own immune cells--is well tolerated, safely administered and can be made in sufficient quantities with relative ease.

Furthermore, the researchers show that the immune responses it elicits are vigorous and target both known cancer antigens as well as a broad variety of the unique antigens, or "neoantigens", expressed by each patient's cancer cells.

"This is the first time ever that a personalized vaccine made from the contents of whole cancer cells has been shown to produce immune responses against neoantigens," said Dr. Kandalaft.

"We've also shown that these immune responses are not just any responses, but the type that kill tumor cells, and that they correlate with better progression-free survival and better overall survival of patients."

"Bevacizumab and cyclophosphamide are routinely used to treat recurrent ovarian cancer. All we did was add the vaccine.”

“This means that we should be able to easily integrate this personalized immunotherapy into the current standard of care for recurrent ovarian cancer," said Dr. Kandalaft.

Ovarian cancer is a group of diseases that originate in the ovaries, or in the related areas of the fallopian tubes and the peritoneum. The peritoneum is the tissue lining that covers organs in the abdomen.

Ovarian cancer causes more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system. But when ovarian cancer is found in its early stages, treatment works best, says the CDC.

Ovarian tumor cells are known to express neoantigens, which are randomly mutated proteins expressed by cancer cells that can be detected as signs of disease by the immune system, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Yet the malignancy has so far proved largely resistant to immunotherapies, including traditional cancer vaccines, that stimulate an attack by killer T cells--immune cells that detect and destroy sick and infected cells.

These researchers did not disclose conflicts of interest: Janos L. Tanyi, Sara Bobisse, Eran Ophir, Sandra Tuyaerts, Annalisa Roberti, Raphael Genolet, Petra Baumgartner, Brian J. Stevenson, Christian Iseli, Denarda Dangaj, Brian Czerniecki, Aikaterini Semilietof, Julien Racle, Alexandra Michel, Ioannis Xenarios, Cheryl Chiang, Dimitri S. Monos, Drew A. Torigian, Harvey L. Nisenbaum, Olivier Michielin, Carl H. June, Bruce L. Levine, Daniel J. Powel Jr., David Gfeller, Rosemarie Mick, Urania Dafni, Vincent Zoete, Alexandre Harari, George Coukos and Lana E. Kandalaft.

For further information please contact Rachel Reinhardt, [email protected] or +1-212-450-1582.