Cancer Vaccines
In 1991, LICR cloned the first cancer-specific antigen allowing the rational design of vaccines that harness the body's own immune system to fight cancer. LICR has remained at the forefront of the effort to develop therapeutic cancer vaccines, which are now showing compelling clinical evidence of preventing cancer recurrence.
The immune system protects the body by detecting antigens—molecules displayed on the cell surface as ‘non-self’ entities—and inducing the production of antigen-specific T cells and antibodies to attack the cell displaying the antigen. While the discovery of cancer-specific antigens suggested that an anti-cancer immune response was possible, subsequent research showed that the response was either not activated appropriately, was too weak or was not sustained long enough to prevent cancer onset or destroy tumors.
LICR was one of the first to design antigen-specific cancer vaccines to attempt to initiate, strengthen, and sustain an anti-cancer immune response in order to induce a tumor response. In 2001, LICR and its non-profit partner, the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) in New York (USA), created the Cancer Vaccine Collaborative, a coordinated global network of clinical trial investigators, with special expertise in immunology, that conducts parallel early-stage clinial trials in an effort to identify an optimal composition of effective antigen-specific cancer vaccines. The CVC has now conducted nearly 40 phase I and II clinical trials, evaluating the immunological responses induced by vaccines with different antigen forms (DNA, peptide or protein), delivery modes (injection, viral delivery, particle-mediated epidermal delivery) and various types of immunomodulators (molecules that enhance or suppress elements of the immune response).
There is now compelling clinical evidence to suggest that therapeutic cancer vaccines, or "antigen-specific cancer immunotherapies" (ASCIs), act in the adjuvant setting, i.e. after surgical removal of the tumor, to prevent the recurrence of certain forms of cancer.
Following the cloning of the first cancer antigen, LICR led a world-wide effort to discover and characterize further cancer antigens, identifying a novel class of cancer antigens known as ‘cancer testis’ (CT) antigens. Today more than 100 CT antigens have been identified in multiple types of cancer. LICR’s lead cancer antigens in antigen-specific cancer vaccine development are:
- MAGE-A3 - LICR licensed this antigen—which is expressed in melanoma, and bladder, head and neck, and lung cancers—to the pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and an ASCI based on the antigen is now in two phase III clinical trials as an adjuvant therapy for both non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and metastatic melanoma. The NSCLC trial is the largest clinical trial ever conducted for lung cancer.
- NY-ESO-1 - the most immunogenic antigen identified thus far, NY-ESO-1 is present in multiple cancer types, including melanoma, myeloma and sarcoma, and bladder, breast and ovarian cancers. This antigen has been the focus of the CVC’s clinical trials as the model CT antigen for comparing various cancer vaccine compositions.
