Replies to post #14799 on NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[austinmediainc]

You can check out the entire thread on the Yahoo NWBO message board under;

Wonder how well the technology is working on dogs. Check out Lifevax??

From Mount Carmel animal hospital website:

Northwest Biotherapeutics, Inc. is a biotechnology company focused on the clinical development of autologous immunotherapy products for cancer and offers a range of treatments analogous to the LifeVax™ treatment in humans. Their technology platform, DCVax®, similarly uses a patient’s own dendritic cells—the starter engine of the immune system—which are loaded with tumor proteins or antigens. Injection of these cells back into the patient initiates a potent immune response against cancer cells, resulting in delayed time to progression and prolonged survival. Their two lead product candidates, DCVax®-Prostate and DCVax®-Brain, are entering FDA-allowed late-stage clinical trials from which licensure is possible. They also have additional biological products in their pipeline that are also FDA-allowed and ready to enter Phase I clinical trials.
NWBO will not see any of their profits, only Toucan and L. Powers will.

[Evaluate]

AustinMedia: I got some additional info about LifeVax for dogs from Mount Carmel Animal Hospital in Monkton, MD.
This treatment was put on hold. It was only administered at 1 facility.
It was being used based on off-label use.
This treatment was only used to treat approx 10 dogs, of which approx half of these dogs had a favorable response, especially in 2 specific cancer types.
LifeVax at the time was available to try out based on any cancer type; it was tested on about 5 or 6 cancer types.
Some types of cancer, such as malignant histiocytosis which is a common cancer in Bernese Mountain Dogs (I know this, since this is what my berner died from), was deemed less appropriate to try due to how aggressive this cancer is and since it used to take a couple weeks to prepare the LifeVax.
For the dogs that had a favorable response, it appeared that the disease may have gone into remission.
The treatment itself was not difficult, and the cost was $2500 - $3000.
Many dog owners elected for chemo instead, solely because there was so little data on effectiveness of LifeVax, whereas with chemo the dog owners had a pretty good idea what result they might expect. Sometimes the chemo was used prior to LifeVax.
Best results appeared to occur when large tumor burden could be removed prior to treatment.
The above animal hospital still has the lab with the equipment, but the technician has moved on.