Biosect,
I didn't mean to imply that City of Hope had attempted to make DCVax-L, but rather that I'd not be at all surprised if COH had over the past many decades experimented with tumor lysate and white cells to make therapeutics that may have benefitted their patients. How close they may have been to DCVax-L I have no idea, and I doubt they do either. COH has been a world leader in many therapies, including CAR-T.
I've mentioned meeting a patient who received his own stem cells the day I received mine, three days later he received his own T-cells modified by adding a disabled HIV molecule, as I remember it. My Dr. was involved in the development of the technology, and that was nearly ten years ago. It was nothing he ever wanted to use on me, the patient had a peek fever of 107, but clearly survived, but it's not an ordeal he'd like to put me through. I believe the treatment worked for this patient, though I've never run into him again. The problem with it was the modified T-cells were only effective for a matter of days, if the disease isn't eliminated in that time additional treatment is required.
Our DCVax-L isn't modifying your own T-cells, but greatly increasing the population of them, and as I gather it that greater population of the T-cells is sustained so your body is continuously fighting its cancer. I believe this is the key reason that our vaccine should be effective in all sorts of solid cancers. I'm a believer that curing cancer is an additive process, IE the more tools the physicians have to use, the greater the likelihood of a cure. DCVax-L will be one of those powerful tools, Poly-ICLC and others will be others, it won't achieve a cure every time, just many more of the times, and Drs. like Dr. Liau will continue to work on use of other therapeutics that will make it even more effective. I certainly don't know, but I suspect that if Dr. Liau's hands weren't tied by a trial protocol, she could achieve 5 year survival for something between 60% and 80% of the GBM patient population.
As I gather it, Dr. Liau and the other Drs. working with her at UCLA are the experts at brain cancers there. If UCLA is to continue to be a leader in treatment of other cancers with DCVax-L, I would assume that Drs. from other depts. would lead such trials at UCLA, not Dr. Liau in spite of her being one of the developers of DCVax-L. I've got to believe she'd be monitoring what they're doing, but I'd be surprised to see her being the lead clinician, or even being officially involved with the trial.
Gary
