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Jan 26, 2010
2nd prostate cancer vaccine
WASHINGTON - A PROSTATE cancer vaccine that uses relatives of smallpox virus helped patients with advanced and otherwise untreatable cancer live longer, US researchers reported on Monday. The vaccine, called Prostvac-VF, is being developed by BN ImmunoTherapeutics, a division of Danish biotech firm Bavarian Nordic. Tests on 125 men with advanced prostate cancer that was resistant to drugs showed they lived more than 8 months longer than men not treated with the vaccine, said Dr Philip Kantoff of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston, who helped lead the study. 'The average survival for these men is two years,' Dr Kantoff said in a telephone interview. 'At three years, 30 per cent of the men who got the vaccine were still alive.' He said a larger study with more men was being planned for later this year.
The study, reported in part at several cancer meetings over the past few months, is detailed in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Prostvac takes a different approach from and is earlier in development than Dendreon Corp's prostate cancer vaccine, called Provenge. Both are so-called therapeutic vaccines, which treat a disease as opposed to vaccines that prevent infection. The Dendreon vaccine uses a patient's own immune system cells, manipulating them to better fight the cancer and then re-infusing them. 'So it is a cell-based vaccine,' said Dr Kanthoff, who worked on both studies. '(Prostvac) is a virus that has been engineered genetically.' -- REUTERS
Home > Breaking News > Tech and Science > Story
Jan 26, 2010
2nd prostate cancer vaccine
WASHINGTON - A PROSTATE cancer vaccine that uses relatives of smallpox virus helped patients with advanced and otherwise untreatable cancer live longer, US researchers reported on Monday. The vaccine, called Prostvac-VF, is being developed by BN ImmunoTherapeutics, a division of Danish biotech firm Bavarian Nordic. Tests on 125 men with advanced prostate cancer that was resistant to drugs showed they lived more than 8 months longer than men not treated with the vaccine, said Dr Philip Kantoff of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston, who helped lead the study. 'The average survival for these men is two years,' Dr Kantoff said in a telephone interview. 'At three years, 30 per cent of the men who got the vaccine were still alive.' He said a larger study with more men was being planned for later this year.
The study, reported in part at several cancer meetings over the past few months, is detailed in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Prostvac takes a different approach from and is earlier in development than Dendreon Corp's prostate cancer vaccine, called Provenge. Both are so-called therapeutic vaccines, which treat a disease as opposed to vaccines that prevent infection. The Dendreon vaccine uses a patient's own immune system cells, manipulating them to better fight the cancer and then re-infusing them. 'So it is a cell-based vaccine,' said Dr Kanthoff, who worked on both studies. '(Prostvac) is a virus that has been engineered genetically.' -- REUTERS
