Vator,
You bring up a good point, but when it comes to using historical data for comparison, is such data available. The norm was saying historical data for GBM survival was under 5% at 5 years, but that was GBM as it was previously defined. Does anyone have historical data for the way GBM is defined now, or for the various sub-types the data is broken down by.
I suspect they'll look at the overall data and be satisfied to compare it with the under 5% at 5 years that's frequently quoted. If within our data we have a sub-type that had a greatly diminished advantage, shouldn't the emphasis be in finding other therapeutics that improve that outcome rather than eliminating it from what's covered by the label.
I think we all discuss cancer like it's a single disease we're trying to cure. The more we learn about it the more we know that we keep finding new ways of breaking it down. I have no idea how many different types of cancers there are today, but I suspect it's into the thousands and the most effective treatment of each of them might be different. A vaccine that was made utilizing the cancer itself may very well be a part of all the most effective treatment protocols. I can't say that all the vaccines will be identical, but I believe that DCVax-L is a good start. If it can be improved upon, NWBO could be the company that also develops the improvements, or different vaccines that work with different cancers.
I know at one time the company had DCVax-Prostate, I don't know if without further testing DCVax-L was determined to be better, or if once DCVax-L is approved, and DCVax-Direct trials are back in the clinic for use in tumors where the tumor is inoperable, will DCVax-Prostate be brought into the clinic specifically for Prostate cancer, which also has all sorts of sub-types.
As most here know I'm a leukemia patient, I'm nearly 7 years post stem cells and doing fine, but I'd be very interested to know if the company is also working on DCVax-B, a version of the vaccine for blood borne cancers. While I believe they're very different, no tumor exists to make the vaccine from, hopefully it can be done utilizing the blood itself, or perhaps in combination with stem cells which can also be harvested from within it. Many people still refer to bone marrow transplants, but in reality stem cells do not require getting actual marrow in most cases, it's a choice for the donor, it's faster and more painful to take marrow, but it can be done directly from the blood, but it takes substantially more time. Of course there are all sorts of blood borne cancers as well, so no telling if one vaccine can possibly benefit all, but I hope it's something that someone is working on.
Gary
