Peptide Cancer Vaccine Safe and Effective Against HER2-Positive Breast Cancer

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According to an abstract presented at the most recent Breast Cancer Symposium, a cancer vaccine derived from HER2 protein performed very well in both safety and efficacy in a randomized trial.

Elizabeth A. Mittendorf, MD, PhD of the MD Anderson Cancer Center presented the findings, noting that no relapses were reported among the patients who had been diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer and who completed the full vaccine course. Those patients had a disease-free survival rate of 88 percent after a 34 month follow-up, compared to 81 percent for patients not given the vaccine (these patients received an immunostimulant without the GP2 fragment of HER2 protein).

"The GP2 vaccine is safe and capable of stimulating an immune response," said Dr. Mittendorf. "In HER2-positive patients who complete the primary vaccination series after standard of care trastuzumab (Herceptin), there have been no recurrences. Combination immunotherapy with trastuzumab and the CD8 T-cell eliciting vaccine warrants further investigation."

According to Mittendorf, the vaccine consists of peptides derived from tumor-associated antigens and an immunoadjuvant—becoming a so-called peptide cancer vaccine and offering an attractive strategy for vaccine development because these peptides are easy to create on a large scale, cheap to do so, and "off the shelf" or "readily exportable into the community."

For this trial, Mittendorf and colleagues randomized 180 patients to receive either the vaccine (called GP2) plus GM-CSF, or GM-CSF alone. Those receiving the vaccine had a treatment course that featured six monthly inoculations.

"We hypothesize that concurrent use of vaccine with trastuzumab may address the early recurrences. A phase I trial of concurrent use showed the combination to be safe," she added.

This particular HER2-derived breast cancer vaccine is not the only one in clinical trials. Another similar vaccine has reached phase III.

Source: Medpage Today

 

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