A DNA cancer vaccine developed by Blue Bell, PA-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals ($INO) caused tumor cell death and increased the rate of survival in animal studies.
Using the company's adaptive electroporation delivery technology, the hTERT DNA vaccine broke the immune system's tolerance to its self-antigens and induced T cells with a tumor-killing function. High levels of human telomerase reverse transcriptase, also known as hTERT, are detected in over 85% of human cancers.
Mice that were given Inovio's hTERT DNA vaccine and then exposed to a cancerous tumor experienced delayed tumor growth and longer overall survival compared with mice that were not vaccinated. In mice that were first exposed to a tumor and then treated, the vaccine was able to kill some of the targeted cancer cells expressing the hTERT antigen while leaving normal cells that did not express the hTERT antigen intact. The treated mice had smaller tumors and also longer overall survival than untreated mice.
Inovio also tested the vaccine in monkeys, where TERT is 96% similar to human TERT, making it a highly relevant human model. In monkeys, the DNA vaccine elicited strong and broad TERT-specific immune responses and demonstrated the potential to eliminate tumor cells. The research appears in the American Association for Cancer Research journal Cancer Immunology Research.
The field of cancer vaccines has seen its ups and downs over the years, and lately there has been a renewed interest in trying to develop therapeutic cancer vaccines. Inovio plans to advance its synthetic hTERT cancer vaccine, INO-1400, into clinical trials in 2014.
- read the release
- here's the study abstract