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Biotech / Medical : IDPH--Positive preliminary results for pivotal trial of ID -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (1509)	3/9/1998 11:51:00 AM
From: Pseudo Biologist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1762

Maurice, thanks for the information. The idea of getting the patient's own immune system, or components thereof, to fight the cancer cells is quite attractive and has been pursued for quite some time. I'll try to take a look at the Malaghan approach in more detail to see if I can figure out what is new about it. Rituxan, to some degree, may be argued to act as a trigger to induce the immune system to get rid of CD20+ cells. At least this is one of the mechanisms by which it is supposed to work. Oncolym, Y2B8 and Bexxar take a more direct, some may say brute force, approach by nuking the lymphoma cells at short range. The report of tuberculosis arising from use of Rituxan makes remote sense, but I cannot see this as a general occurrence - would surprise me. PB

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (1509)	3/12/1998 1:39:00 AM
From: scaram(o)uche	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1762

Maurice: Sorry, don't follow this thread any longer, so just now saw your post. I like the approach, but there is one major problem..... anti-lymphoma vaccines, based on use of the antibody produced by a given patient's malignant B cells, don't account for somatic mutation. That is, the portions of the antibody that are recognized as foreign by the patient are highly variable, and the tumor actually recurs wearing different clothing. It's interesting that you brought it up in this thread, as Idec almost ended up sprouting lilies in an earlier life, due largely to attempts to vaccinate against lymphoma-associated "idiotypes". I very much like the concept of antigen-pulsed dendritic cells, however. These approaches would certainly complement the anti-CD20 (and anti-CD19, etc.) efforts. I can't see them replacing them. Slightly related.... Vical has licensed a naked vaccine approach for lymphoma idiotypes from Stanford. Same criticisms would apply, but.... I sort of feel that it would be a more straightforward method of trying to play catch up when a patient's tumor changes its coat. There are also experimental approaches to express an adjuvant within the same gene construct as the idiotype antigen. Rick