Liver most cancers vaccine with immunotherapy reveals promise in new trial

This preliminary scientific trial was for GNOS-PV02 — a personalised DNA vaccine created by Geneos Therapeutics.

“Essentially GNOS-PV02 aims to (educate) the immune system to recognize antigens that are present in the cancer so that the immune system can better recognize and attack cancer cells,” defined lead examine writer Mark Yarchoan, MD, affiliate professor of oncology on the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

“The vaccine is personalized for each individual patient’s cancer. Just the way that every person has a unique fingerprint, every cancer has its own set of unique antigens that are derived from unique DNA mutations within the cancer,” Yarchoan advised Medical News Today.

“To make a personalized vaccine, first a biopsy is obtained of the cancer, and the cancer DNA is sequenced to identify the potential unique antigens within the cancer. Then a personalized vaccine is manufactured that encodes the unique antigens identified in the analysis of the tumor biopsy.”

— Mark Yarchoan, MD, lead examine writer

GNOS-PV02 was used at the side of the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab, identified underneath the model identify Keytruda.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval for pembrolizumab for the remedy of HCC in November 2018.

“Despite recent advances in the treatment of HCC, only a minority of patients respond to contemporary systemic treatments and the prognosis for patients with advanced disease is inferior to most other tumor types,” Yarchoan stated.

Yarchoan famous that till lately, most most cancers vaccines failed within the clinic, citing various potential causes as to why.

“One reason is that past cancer vaccines usually targeted antigens that weren’t specific enough to the cancer,” he stated. “Most cancer antigens are unique to an individual cancer, and the technology to personalize cancer vaccines has only been possible very recently.”

“But the other reason why cancer vaccines generally failed in the clinic is that they were used against advanced cancers, without any other immunotherapy,” Yarchoan continued.

“We’ve learned that vaccines can cause immune cells to become exhausted before they can eliminate cancer cells. For this reason, contemporary cancer vaccines are often combined with other immune-activating therapies like pembrolizumab. This prevents the vaccine-induced T cells from becoming exhausted,” he defined.

Researchers recruited 36 members for this scientific trial. All members acquired the mixture of GNOS-PV02 vaccine and pembrolizumab.

At the top of the examine, researchers discovered that almost one-third of members skilled tumor shrinkage, which is about twice as many individuals seen in research of immunotherapy alone for HCC.

Additionally, about 8% of the examine members had no proof of a tumor after receiving the mixture remedy.

“The response rate on this study is high enough that I think it’s unlikely that the pembrolizumab alone did this — it supports the idea that the vaccine contributed to the efficacy observed,” Yarchoan stated.

“I think it’s also notable that the response rate was higher than pembrolizumab alone without a major increase in toxicity.”

“I think the results are highly encouraging, but larger randomized studies are needed to confirm the efficacy of personalized cancer vaccines and to define the optimal treatment sequence for their use. Larger clinical studies are being planned by (Geneos Therapeutics) and I’m hopeful that such studies will confirm that this vaccine is an active agent.”

— Mark Yarchoan, MD, lead examine writer

After reviewing the outcomes of this examine, Anton Bilchik, MD, PhD, surgical oncologist, chief of medication and Director of the Gastrointestinal and Hepatobiliary Program at Providence Saint John’s Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, CA, advised MNT he was “absolutely astonished” on the outcomes on this early vaccine trial.

“HCC is one of the most common cancers in the world and it’s typically been very resistant to treatment,” Bilchik defined. “Recently, immunotherapy has been introduced as a possible treatment for patients with advanced HCC, but the response rates for immunotherapy have not been great.”

“What this study does is take patients’ own tumor and create a personalized vaccine, which doubles the response of the immunotherapy that is currently used for HCC,” he continued. “Not only are the results astonishing, but these are patients that have failed first-line treatment and are not amenable to resection or transplantation.”

MNT additionally spoke with Martin Gutierrez, MD, director of Phase I analysis on the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, about this examine.

“(This is) very encouraging news,” Gutierrez commented. “(The next research step should be a) larger Phase II trial in first-line therapy.”

When requested if we’ll see extra customized most cancers vaccines sooner or later, Bilchik stated completely.

“This is the future. And what makes this approach unique is that not only are they using the patient’s own tumor biopsy cells to identify these mutations, but they take it a step further by using these computational algorithms to predict which genes can be recognized by the patient’s own immune system. So this is getting into the field of really advanced technology and then ultimately artificial intelligence.”

— Anton Bilchik, MD, PhD, surgical oncologist