26 november 2014: Bron: persbericht CIMT

Inmiddels is de fase I/II studie met actieve personalised vaccins - APVAC's bij hersentumoren van start gegaan met ook deelname van het LUMC - Leiden.

Het studieprotocol staat hier al mogen er maar in eerste instantie 20 patiënten deelnemen. Ik ken in ieder geval 1 patiënt die al is aangenomen in het LUMC: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02149225

Contact over studie bij hersentumoren, ook voor deelname in Leiden, kunt u verkrijgen bij:

Contacts

Contact: Norbert Hilf, PhD	+49 7071 5397 ext 100	info@immatics.com
Contact: Sabrina Kuttruff-Coqui, PhD	+49 7071 5397 ext 100	info@immatics.com

Daarnaast heeft het CIMT afgelopen week in Barcelona een persbericht doen uitgaan dat zij APVAC's ook gaan toepassen bij veel andere vormen van kanker met solide tumoren. Ik kan nog geen studieprotocol vinden maar u kunt natuurljk altijd via uw behandelend arts hier informatie vragen:

If you have any further questions about this study, do not hesitate to contact us by email (gapvac@immatics.com) or phone (07071 – 53 970).

Onderaan dit artikel heb ik persbericht van ESMO Barcelona van 21 november geplaatst.

Een interessant studierapport over personalised vaccins is dit: Therapeutic vaccines. The ultimate personalized therapy? Het volledige studierapport is gratis in te zien.

11 juli 2013: Bron: GAPVAC

GAPVAC is onderdeel van een consortium (CIMT - Immunotherapy) van 14 organisaties in Europa en de VS dat zich geheel gaat richten op immuuntherapie in de behandeling van kanker met de ontwikkeling van de zo door hun genoemde actief gepersonaliseerde vaccins (APVACs). Deze vaccins worden op maat gemaakt voor elke individuele patiënt, gebaseerd op de individuele aspecten - receptoren - van de tumor van de patiënt en het immuunsysteem. In feite dus gewoon een vorm van dendritische celtherapie maar dan soms met hulpstoffen van buitenaf.

GAPVAC - The Glioma Actively Personalized Vaccine Consortium - staat voor ontwikkeling van vaccins bij vormen van hersentumoren - glioma blastoma multiforme , maar ook vaccins bij andere vormen van kanker zullen worden ontwikkeld. Want bij de andere aangesloten organisaties worden ook vaccins ontwikkeld voor andere vormen van kanker.

Het GAPVAC wordt ondersteund door een Europese subsidie van 6 miljoen euro. Een prachtig initiatief natuurlijk dat aansluit op een in wezen gelijksoortig programma dat onder leiding van o.a prof. dr. Bernards in het NKI - Amsterdam wordt uitgevoerd en daarvoor ook veel geld heeft gekregen. Een negatief aspect hieraan zou je kunnen zeggen is dat met dit consortium de patenten op vaccins min of meer worden veilig gesteld. Maar aan de andere kant is dit natuurlijk wel de aangewezen weg om kanker onder controle te krijgen. En onderzoek en implementatie van ook vaccins is kostbaar. Dus ik zie dit persoonljik als echt een grote stap voorwaarts. Al in 2014 zullen studies met speciale APVAC's - vaccins voor hersentumoren - van start gaan.

Het GAPVAC heeft dit als doel:

The vision of therapeutic cancer vaccines is to effectively target and destroy all tumor cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed. Current strategies based on target structures on the tumors, i.e. antigens found commonly in a high proportion of cancer patients. Recently, several clinical trials showed good safety and promising signs of clinical activity of such cancer vaccines. GAPVAC is taking cancer vaccines to the next level by assessing the individuality of each patient´s disease to utilize the full antigenic potential of immunotherapy. GAPVAC`s goal is to deliver to patients a novel class of medicine: Actively Personalized Vaccines (APVACS), which are actively tailored to the tumor characteristics of each individual patient.

Bij het consortium van 14 organisaties heeft ook het LUMC - Leiden zich aangesloten. Zie hier op de website van het GAPVAC welke universiteiten en organisaties zich hebben aangesloten. Het hoofdkantoor van de CIMT - GAPVAC bevindt zich in Mainz - Duitsland.

Association for Cancer Immunotherapy
Kupferbergterrasse 17-19
55116 Mainz
Germany

CIMT office:

Christine Castle
E-Mail: office@cimt.eu
Website: www.cimt.eu

APVAC's - active personalised vaccins are the novel cancer antigens for personalised immunotherapies,

Source: ESMO - Barcelona

Possibilities for personalised vaccines revealed at ESMO Symposium

LUGANO/GENEVA, Switzerland, 21 November 2014 – The possibilities for personalised vaccines in all types of cancer are revealed today in a lecture from Dr Harpreet Singh at the ESMO Symposium on Immuno-Oncology 2014 in Geneva, Switzerland.

“One of the biggest hurdles in cancer immunotherapy is the discovery of appropriate cancer targets that can be recognised by T-cells,” said Singh, who is scientific coordinator of the EU-funded GAPVAC phase I trial which is testing personalised vaccines in glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive brain cancer. “In the GAPVAC trial we will treat glioblastoma patients with vaccines that are ideal for each patient because they contain personalised antigens.”¹

For all patients in the GAPVAC study, researchers will identify genes expressed in the tumour, peptides presented on the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) receptor (i.e. peptides which will be seen by T-cells), cancer specific mutations, and the ability of the immune system to mount a response to certain antigens. Based on this information, two vaccines, called actively personalised vaccines (APVACs), will be constructed and administered following conventional surgery.

The first vaccine will be prepared from a warehouse of 72 targets previously identified by the researchers as relevant for treatment in glioblastoma. These peptides have been manufactured and put on the shelf ready to be vaccinated in patients. Patients will be given a cocktail of the peptides they express and which their immune system can mount a response to.

Singh said: “A patient may express 20 of these 72 targets on their tumour, for example. If we find that the patient’s immune system can mount responses to 5 of the 20 targets, we mix the 5 peptides and give them to the patient. We mix the peptides off the shelf but the cocktail is changed for each patient because it is matched to their biomarkers.”

The second vaccine is synthesised de novo based on a mutated peptide expressed in the tumour of the patient. Singh said: “That peptide is not in our warehouse because it just occurs in this one single patient. The patient receives APVAC-1 and APVAC-2 in a highly personalised fashion in a way that I think has never been done for any patient.”

He added: “GAPVAC has two major goals. One is to show that personalised vaccines are feasible, since this is one of the most complicated trials ever done in cancer immunotherapy. The second is to show that we can mount far better biological responses in these patients compared to vaccination with non-personalised antigens.”

Singh’s previous research has shown that vaccination with non-personalised antigens leads to better disease control and longer overall survival in phase I and phase II clinical studies in patients with renal cell cancer.²

Singh said: “For the non-personalised vaccines we used off-the-shelf peptide targets that were shared by many patients with a particular cancer. Using this approach we have successfully vaccinated patients with renal cell cancer, colorectal cancer and glioblastoma.”

He added: “During this research we identified other targets that appeared in very few patients or even, in extreme cases, in a single patient. Often these rarer peptides are of better quality, meaning they are more specifically seen in cancer cells and occur at higher levels. This led us to start developing personalised cancer vaccines which contain the ideal set of targets for one particular patient. We hope they will be even more effective than the off-the-shelf vaccines.”

Singh continued: “A very simple example from something established is trastuzumab in breast cancer. Trastuzumab was originally given to every breast cancer patient and the efficacy was just seen in a subset. Now only about 20% of breast cancer patients receive trastuzumab and the personalised aspect is just based on the low abundance of Her2, the target.”

Singh believes that personalised vaccines hold promise for all types of cancer, and that personalisation could also be applied to adoptive cell therapy.

He concluded: “Personalisation is not limited to vaccines but is a general principle that could be applied to cancer immunotherapy more broadly. We are starting with vaccines but we are also thinking about how to use personalised antigens in adoptive cell therapy.”

-END-

Notes

References

¹ Glioma Actively Personalised Vaccine Consortium (GAPVAC): www.gapvac.eu

²Walter S, et al. Multipeptide immune response to cancer vaccine IMA901 after single-dose cyclophosphamide associates with longer patient survival. Nat Med. 2012;18(8):1254-1261. doi: 10.1038/nm.2883. Epub 2012 Jul 29.

gapvac, apvac, actieve gepersonaliseerde vaccins, LUMC Leiden, immuuntherapie, dendritische celtherapie, personalised medicine, hersentumoren, glioblastoma multiforme