LICR NewsLink

March 2005

Cancer Vaccine Collaborative Meeting

On February 14-15, 2005, 60 participants in the Cancer Vaccine Collaborative (CVC), established by the Cancer Research Institute and LICR, convened at NYU Cancer Center in Manhattan. Clinical data from 29 LICR- and CVC-sponsored clinical trials, from CVC sites in Australia, Europe, Japan and the USA, were presented and compared.

Dr. Lloyd J. Old, Director of LICR and the CVC, opened the meeting by describing the five principles forming the foundation for tumor immunology and the field’s potential as an effective treatment of cancer. The principles of scientific advancement in tumor immunology include: 1) proof that the immune system spontaneously detects and destroys cancer cells via immunosurveillance; 2) identification of targets on cancer cells that the immune system can recognize, which includes proteins and glycolipids; 3) establishment of techniques to monitor the immune response to these targets; 4) recognition of the link between tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and disease course; and 5) evidence that vaccination can alter the course of disease progression. As Dr. Old reiterated, learning how best to immunize is of critical importance; however, in order to learn how to immunize, we must also learn how to monitor the immune response to vaccination.

The CVC is dedicated to accomplishing these two goals through a group of early-phase clinical trials that are designed to investigate variables such as antigen form (protein, peptide or DNA), delivery (injection, particle-mediated epidermal delivery (PMED), and viral), and adjuvant (compounds that enhance the immune response to the antigen). Standardization of monitoring techniques and data reporting allows for direct comparison of data from the multiple clinical trials sites, aimed at accelerating clinical discovery.

Dr. Eric Hoffman, Director of the LICR Office of Clinical Trials Management described CVC clinical trial design, which assumes that clinical effect depends on an antigen-specific immune response and that the assays used to monitor the immune response are constantly changing, limiting the correlations between immunity and clinical effect. Therefore, the goals set out for the CVC meeting include determining what clinical effects have been seen with NY-ESO-1 vaccination, to discuss the limitations that hamper progress of these investigations (including limited patient populations and inconsistencies in T-cell assays and other monitoring techniques), and to identify means to overcome some of these limitations, enabling the CVC to move forward into the next stages of discovery.

The second day of the meeting focused on immunological monitoring. Discussions centered on four major points of the comprehensive monitoring needed for clinical trials: 1) antibody analysis; 2) NY-ESO-1 expression; 3) T cell analysis; and 4) in situ immunology (what is happening at the tumor site, not just in the peripheral blood). For these four areas, presentations and discourse addressed standardization (in NY-ESO-1 immunohistochemistry, montanide production, and data presentation—especially of delayed hypersenstitivity (DTH) reactions), various methodologies, reagent needs, and research questions in the pre- and post-vaccination setting.