updated: 04/19/2020
DCVax-L (and other dendritic cell vaccines)
by Stephen Western
Astrocytoma Options.com
Dendritic cells are immune cells which circulate in the blood, whose main function is to process and present antigens to T-cells, which may then target any cell bearing the antigen.
Dendritic cell based vaccine therapies require sufficient fresh tumour material from the patient receiving the vaccine, as well as the collection of dendritic cells from the patient, by leukapheresis. The dendritic cells are multiplied and co-cultured with the tumour lysate and later the DC cells, now capable of presenting tumour antigens to immune effector cells, are re-injected into the patient intra-dermally.
A personalized dendritic cell vaccine therapy called DCVax-L, developed by Northwest Biotherapeutics (based in Bethesda, Maryland, USA), is currently being tested in a phase III trial for glioblastoma, with estimated primary completion date of September 2014. This trial is recruiting at 54 study locations across the United States and one in London, UK, with an estimated enrollment of 300 patients. Patients joining this trial must have sufficient tumor material available from surgery to create the vaccine, and must undergo standard radiochemotherapy. Patients are randomized into two groups: one group receives injections of their own peripheral blood mononuclear (white blood) cells following radiochemotherapy (control arm); the other group receives the DCVax-L vaccine, in which the patient's dendritic cells pick up tumor antigens by co-culture with tissue from the patient's tumor.
In a small preliminary trial including 23 newly diagnosed and recurrent glioblastoma patients, the vaccine showed excellent results, with the 15 newly diagnosed patients having a median survival time of 35.9 months, which is roughly double the median survival time for glioblastoma patients receiving the standard radiation and TMZ protocol (1).
