Business Week on Avax
I dug out another article on Avax which appeared already in April of last year in BW. Although the information given is nothing new for dedicated Avax followers, it is an extremely valuable aknowledgement of Avax and its technology.
IMHO
Windward
Live slow, sail fast
NEWS FLASH April 14, 1999
Finally, a Promising Vaccine for Fighting Cancer
Wider testing on melanoma patients is set to begin after successful early-stage clinical trials
What if the body's own immune system could be drafted in the war against cancer? That has been a goal much sought but never reached. Perhaps until now. A cancer vaccine made from patients' own tumor cells appears to extend survival and reduce relapse rates for the sickest melanoma patients, those whose disease has already spread to two lymph nodes, according to early clinical trials. These patients typically have a very low cure rate from surgery alone, with a survival rate of only 5% to 10% after five years.
In an early-stage clinical trial of 40 seriously ill patients, vaccine researchers reported that 17 were still alive after a follow-up period of 33 months, and 12 remained relapse-free -- raising the projected five-year survival rate for the group to 47%.
The results, reported at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in Philadelphia, are part of a growing body of evidence that cancer vaccines, under development for more than a decade, may be nearing reality, says Dr. David Berd, professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and the discoverer of the melanoma vaccine. "For too long, cancer vaccines have promised much and delivered damn little," says Berd. "The problem has always been that while they show great results in mice, it's been very hard to get them to work in humans."
BECOMING FOREIGN. The melanoma vaccine, called M-Vax, in essence beefs up the patient's own immune system. Made by Avax Technologies Inc. in Kansas City, Mo., it is created by removing some of the patient's own cancer cells and modifying them with a protein molecule called a "hapten" that makes them appear foreign to the patient's immune system. When the modified cells are reinjected, the immune system is stimulated to recognize all melanoma cells and destroy them.
Berd says the technique could theoretically be used against a whole range of tumors, and Avax is currently conducting early-stage clinical trials of the drug for ovarian cancer. It is also recruiting some 400 patients for a broad, two-year trial of the melanoma vaccine. Melanoma is the most serious form of skin cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that in the U.S., over 40,000 new cases are diagnosed, and 7,000 people die from the disease each year. The current treatment for advanced-stage melanoma is surgical removal followed by high doses of alpha-interferon, a form of chemotherapy.
By Catherine Arnst in Philadelphia |
