Experimental Vaccine made from Patients Own Brain Tumor Tissue

A recent study looks at an experimental vaccine that helps to treat glioblastoma multiforme (BGM).

This is the most aggressive form of gliomas, and known as a collection of tumors that arise from a set of precursors that are located in the central nervous system. They are clinically divided into four grades, with grade 4 being the most common in humans.

Patients with this type of tumor were treated with an experimental vaccine that's made from the patient's own resected tumor tissue. According to the study, it's has improved survival rates when compared with patients that received standard care alone based on an analysis of a phase 2 trial of the vaccine.

"We are talking about fast-growing tumors that invade normal brain tissue and are very difficult to treat," said Orin Bloch, MD, a neurosurgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and lead author of the study, via a press release. "These tumors occur in up to 23,000 Americans annually, and are typically treated with surgical resection of the tumor followed by chemotherapy and radiation treatment."

Researchers enrolled 41 adult patients in the phase 2 trial. All participants had recurrent tumors between 2007 and 2011. Each patient received an average of six doses of the HSPPC-96 vaccine. Following the treatment, close to 90 percent of patients were alive at six months and 30 percent were alive after one year. Though further studies will be needed to test the drug's effectiveness, it could potentially be approved to treat recurrent brain tumors as there are currently few approved therapeutic cancer vaccines.

"The grim prognosis is exactly why new research is important," said Bloch, who is an assistant professor of neurological surgery at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. "GBMs have been around for a long time, and still outcomes are poor. With studies such as this one, I believe we can change that."

The vaccine, HSPPC-96, is produced individually for each patient by using their own resected tumor tissue. Following surgery through tumor removal, the tumor is sent to the vaccine production facility at Agenus Inc., where the HSPPC-96 vaccine is created through the unique individual participant's response to trigger an immune system response and kill tumor cells that may remain following surgery.

At this time, researchers are currently working on their next phase or research that randomizes a phase II trial of investigation in the HSPPC-96 vaccine. This will insure that the product is both save and effective when given with the cancer drug Avastin (bevacizumab) that helps shrink brain tumors through standard GBM therapy.

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Neuro-Oncology.