Personalised Cancer Vaccine in Clinical Trail Phase

Release Date: 18-Sep-2019

In 2014, six melanoma patients received infusions of anticancer vaccine composed of their dendritic cells of the patient’s own body. The experiment was performed at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Frist of all the extraction of immune cells from the patients’ blood takes place, cultured them in the lab, and mixed in peptides. The mixing of peptide based on the specific mutations present in the genomes of each patient’s tumor.

The cells had then taken up the peptides much as they take up foreign antigens in the body in the course of normal immune patrol. After the administration of the vaccine in the form of three infusions over several months, the dendritic cells would induce activation and expansion of T cells capable of identifying and destroying the cancer cells, while sparing healthy tissue.

More than 25 personalized cancer vaccines are currently in early-stage trials will ultimately succeed to get approval. The success of the personalised cancer vaccine depends not only on determining the numbers and types of neoantigens needed to best improve patient outcomes, but on which vaccine platforms are the most scalable, cost-effective, and quick to produce. Dendritic-cell vaccines are highly effective in provoking an immune response because the role of dendritic cells in the immune system is to present antigens. 

Another method involves the intramuscular injection of a cocktail of synthesized long peptides. The length of the peptides is typically about 20 amino acids and each contains about 8andndash; to 11andndash;amino acid neoantigen sequence. There are two safety trials using this approach have been published, one in melanoma patients and the other in glioblastoma patients.

Because they are synthesized, the production of long peptides is scalable, but their use as human therapeutics requires specific process controls to ensure good manufacturing practices (GMP). The costs of production are also high because the long peptides consist of more incomplete sequences, which limit the yield.