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Biotech / Medical : Ionis Pharmaceuticals (IONS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scott H. Davis who wrote (1972)	5/7/1998 3:32:00 PM
From: Peter Singleton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4676

Reuters on the Nature Medicine articles: Vaccines For Melanoma On The Horizon NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Two different experimental cancer vaccines being developed as treatments for the deadly skin cancer melanoma have shown promise in a small number of patients. Both vaccines, described in papers in the March issue of Nature Medicine, are designed to stimulate a patient's own immune responses. A team from the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, led by Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg developed and tested a synthetic peptide vaccine for melanoma based on a tumor marker (the gp100 melanoma-associated antigen) found on the surface of the malignant cells. They report that 91% of 31 patients with metastatic melanoma were successfully immunized with the vaccine, and it resulted in more white cells being attracted to tumor sites. Tumors in skin, lung, soft tissues, liver, brain and lymph nodes shrank in 42% of patients treated with a combination of the experimental vaccine and the cytokine interleukin-2 (IL-2). Tumors at these sites have traditionally been unresponsive to IL-2 therapy. This combined approach produced response rates significantly higher than that with either agent alone. Rosenberg's group says these findings represent "...the first time that a self-peptide... has provided a consistent and powerful means of immunizing patients to generate lymphocyte precursors against growing tumor." This approach, they add, could also be used for other cancers such as those of the breast, prostate, and ovary. Meanwhile, Dr. Dirk Schadendorf from the University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany, has taken a different approach to creating a vaccine against melanoma. He and his colleagues took dendritic cells (cells that present antigens to special white cells, stimulating an immune response) from melanoma patients and inserted a "cocktail" of antigens from the patient's own tumor. They immunized 16 advanced melanoma patients with the experimental vaccine, injecting the vaccine directly into the patient's lymph nodes. Vaccination was well-tolerated and produced an immune response in all patients and a clinical response in 5 of the patients. Two of the patients had a complete response that lasted more than 12 months. In an editorial accompanying the two studies, Drs. John M. Timmerman and Ronald Levy of Stanford University School of Medicine in California call the clinical responses seen with both vaccines "exceptional," adding that the dendritic-based vaccine may be "...immediately applicable.." to a variety of human cancers. "Carefully controlled clinical trials will be required to determine how best to apply the tools now at hand for inducing therapeutic anti-tumor immunity," Timmerman and Levy conclude. SOURCE: Nature Medicine (1998;4:269-270, 321-332)