NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[Pyrrhonian]

Changed one more thing: it occurred to me that I presented too small a view of things regarding intratumoral DC vaccines, and so amended on section to this, after the NW PR quote:

The remarkable trend continues. Adding to the ten in the Triozzi pilot study, this would seem to be the 11th patient officially treated with a directly injected DC vaccine that has seen effectual results from this therapy--and now in terminal lung cancer at that, the number one cancer killer. The fact that this is one patient in the study does not mean it is a bizarre occurrence. Because of the three-tiered dosing schedule, necessary in these Ph I stage trials, many of the patients simply do not have mature enough data to report on. Given the small population of those in the trial with more mature results (perhaps 7-10 patients by now) and the extensive yet ultimately ineffectual SOC treatments each patient had received prior to enrollment in the DCVax-Direct trial, the probability of an effect of this magnitude being seen in even one patient from a mostly ineffective therapy, would be exceedingly small. If due to chance, it is akin to 36 people being dealt five cards each, turning over ten hands, and finding one of them is a royal straight flush.

The far more likely scenario is that, just as seen in the Triozzi study, 100% response rate will eventually be reported in the DCVax-Direct trial. What has not been seen to date with an intratumorally injected DC vaccine is zero response. In fact, as a broad category, intratumoral injection has always proved effective. Even in using synthetic, toxic and therefore harmful substances (as with intratumorally injected chemotherapy). This is not the case with the abundantly homogeneous DC vaccines. Furthermore, intratumoral chemotherapy fails to solve the underlying problem: lack of immunity. The immune system will go on viewing those recently destroyed cancer cells as normal cells, and that patient's cancer will always come back--and often will be even more difficult to treat (by mutation). DCVax, on the other hand, trains the body's immune system to see them, and their full array of biomarkers, as the enemy. This should cause regression of tumors to continue even in the eventual absence of injected vaccine (as already witnessed via the regression of non-injected tumors).

Now a keen eye will have noticed that I wrote "this would seem to be the 11th patient officially treated with a DC vaccine," but the fact is, there have been many: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=intratumoral+injection+of+dendritic+cells&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=bWV7U-r5B4ugqAbwp4HgDA&ved=0CCcQgQMwAA

These patients were not able to benefit from the more than 10x increased effectiveness of the patented DCVax-Direct technology over other DC vaccine therapies--however, these many studies clearly show an abundance of validation for this intratumorally injected technology.