Scott:
That's just "canned" immunology. I could have written that statement in 1985, and the same old sh*t is getting tiring.
I mean that sincerely. On the other hand, I do not mean to imply that Bucalo is insincere.
I'm a serologist. Tumor antigens, monoclonals and even anti-ids have been my life. I simply point out that, since Mark Greene, anti-id vaccines have *sounded* like a good concept, but rarely if ever worked (anti-bacterial responses may be the glaring exception, but even that is an open question). There is very good reason for this. On the other hand, there is also compelling reason to believe that, given the correct primary antibody, anti-ids could work. For any TTNP bulls, I simply suggest that you ask the company about the properties of the primary antibodies that differentiate them from immunogens from past anti-id efforts. Until they answer this question, and until they address questions about self-tolerance (these antigens are characteristic of NORMAL tissues in addition to tumors), I'll take the easy route and just add the comments to my "further BS" file.
Again, I hope, for the sake of disease resolution, that I am wrong.
Here's another step that TTNP bulls can take..... in the April issue of Nature Biotechnology..... there is an article from Nair et al., from Eli Gilboa's lab. They transfect dendritic cells with CEA mRNA and elicit cytotoxic T cell responses. Like TTNP, the authors completely avoid the issue of self-tolerance. While I don't want to post Dr. Gilboa's email address here (or privately), you can get it from the journal, page 364. Why not ask him about (1) CEA as an autoantigen, and (2) anti-ids and responses that are restricted to a given CEA epitope.
Now..... it serves no purpose to repeatedly bounce the same issue off of me. 99% of experienced immunologists will look at these projects with skepticism. TTNP can choose to release fluff, or they can try to provide a molecular model of why they feel that their chances are better than past failed efforts.
Rick |
