NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

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The title suggests that anti-PD1 therapies are not necessary for DCVax-Direct to overcome local and systemic immune suppression imposed by the tumor and its microenvironment.

Maybe this is a poor way for me to describe what the SITC NWBO title potentially means, but this is extremely significant because it intimates that adjuvants are not necessary to make DCVax-Direct effective.

If tumors cannot mount suppression against dendritic cells, one can infer that they are also not mounting effective tumor response against the t and b cells activated by the dendritic cells. This is why the last part of the SITC sentence is so important.

"able to overcome local and systemic immune suppression imposed by the tumor and its microenvironment."

IMHO, systemic immune suppression imposed by the tumor does not just mean against the dendritic cell, it means against the entire immune response. Thus, if DCVax-Direct is able to overcome all the "tricks" used by the tumor microenvironment to otherwise effect immune suppression within the tumor itself (locally) and throughout the body (systemically), then all that is left to accomplish is tumor recognition, and as we know, DCVax-Direct uses the full compliment of tumor antigens to empower t and b cells to locate their target.