NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[Doktornolittle]

More Antigens Better?

In addition to the synthetic vs natural antigen issue, there is the issue that it might not be reasonable to assume what the antigens are going to be. Clearly the scientist that developed ICT-107 believed they could make some assumptions about what antigens would be present, but even they believed that ICT-107 was not going to be effective for everyone.

More Antigens Better?

I want to try to logic through this:

1 Antigen, 10M DC's:
You had better pick the most common antigen.

Tumor Lysate, 10M DC's:
Assuming the cell mechanism for presenting internal proteins on the outer cell membrane does not discriminate, and or that the lysing process generates the same population/distribution; The most common antigen will be targeted by the most DC's. DC's for all antigens will be generated in proportion to how common the antigens are.

In Filter theory, the Wiener–Hopf equation shows that the best signal to noise you can get from a "noise filter" is by shaping the pass-band proportional to the signal to noise over that spectrum.

It's a little bit of a stretch... but I think it might be a meaningful analog. The same principals might say that the best you can do statistically in programming DC's is to program them in proportion to the antigen population. That is what a tumor lysate would do. That is what DCVax-L does, (given the two aforementioned assumptions).

Besides... Linda Lau apparently thought it was the best way to go or she would not have joined the team... for what that is worth.