NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[DocLee]

There is an interesting report in the current edition of "The Journal for the Immunotherapy of Cancer", entitled "Safety and efficacy of dendritic cell-based immunotherapy DCVAC/OvCa added to first-line chemotherapy (carboplatin plus paclitaxel) for epithelial ovarian cancer: a phase 2, open-label, multicenter, randomized trial".

It is by a group from the Czech Republic and deals with Ovarian Cancer. It can be found here.

The basic method is to make a vaccine ("DCVAC/OvCa") by exposing the patient's dendritic cells (from leukapheresis) to cells from two established ovarian cancer cell lines (OV-90 and SK-OV-3), which cells had been killed by high hydrostatic pressure. This provided the source of multiple Tumour Associated Antigens for loading onto the autologous DCs.

There were 2 active arms of the treatment and 1 control. The control had standard debulking surgery followed by chemotherapy, whilst the active arms had the same plus the vaccine either during the initial treatment or after it ("sequentially").

The results of the trial led the investigators to conclude that DCVAC/OvCa and leukapheresis was not associated with significant safety concerns and that the vaccine given sequentially to debulking and chemotherapy was associated with a statistically significant improvement in PFS in patients undergoing first-line treatment of Epithelial Ovarian Cancer ("EOC").

Whilst there are many differences between this and the NWBO vaccines , the efficacy shown by this trial should comfort those of us whose belief in NWBO is currently sorely tried by the lack of information emanating from management.