Replies to post #20506 on NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[austinmediainc]

Everyone does realize that with the SOC OS time is based on the average. Meaning that some patients may pass much before and some much after. In the Phase I for DcVax L I believe the same thing had occurred (I can't find the presentation with chart). If you look at the chart plotting patient deaths there are patients that passed before typical standard of care while ON treatment. He may have been on the treatment or on placebo and crossed over, this doesn't guarantee an OS beyond typical SOC.

[Evaluate]

Interesting stuff (albeit from 6/2011) = your link = www.mayfieldclinic.com/QA_Brain_Tumors.htm
includes:

Q: What is immunotherapy and its potential to fight brain tumors?

A: It is helpful to understand that every one of us is reliant on our immune cells to detect and kill cancer cells that may spontaneously form in our bodies. And the immune system generally does a good job of that. However, in patients who have glioblastoma, the number of those cancer-fighting immune cells is decreased by 75 percent. These patients only have 25 percent of the normal number of immune cells. We are not sure whether the glioblastoma causes this situation or whether these patients have an impaired immune system that has led to the glioblastoma. The latter is a strong possibility.

The reduced number of immune cells is not the only problem for patients with glioblastoma. A second problem is that the remaining cancer-fighting immune cells are impaired. They try to recognize and kill the tumor, but for some reason they are unable to get the job done. So we have to boost the numbers of cancer-fighting immune cells as well as their activity, their strength.

We do that by using a vaccine to re-educate these immune cells to be stronger cancer-fighting cells. And, luckily, there is a type of white blood cell in the body called the dendritic cell. This immune cell, which resembles an octopus, likes to digest tumor cells, and in so doing it pushes fragments of the tumor out onto its branches, or arms.
When the arms of this dendritic cell – or teacher cell -- come in contact with inactive immune cells – or student cells – the student cells become activated and can home in on the tumor and kill it. When we re-educate these cells to become active, they then divide and produce children and grandchildren, which all have the same characteristics, because they have been educated and taught to fight and recognize the tumor. It is as if you had trained a pack of guard dogs.

A Phase II study of a dendritic cell-based vaccine (the DC Vax trial) involves taking dendritic cells from a patient newly diagnosed with glioblastoma and sending them to a central laboratory, where they are then incubated with tissue from the patient’s own brain tumor. During the incubation, or fermenting, process, the dendritic cells chomp up and digest the tumor and become primed to be “teachers.” The dendritic cells are then sent back to the patient’s hospital, where they are injected under the patient’s skin. The cells educate the body’s immune cells, which move from that site under the skin to the brain and attack the tumor.

The UC Brain Tumor Center was one of the early centers involved in this therapeutic clinical trial, whose patients also underwent surgery and received radiation therapy and chemotherapy. The trial is currently closed to enrollment, but we have acquired some promising information from the results of the first 20 patients. The therapy seems to be well tolerated; and of the 20 patients who received this therapy, 19 have lived longer than the average for this tumor. As such, DC Vax has a real potential to become a standard therapy for glioblastoma.

plus info about Celldex DCX-110 and other treatments, and:

Q: How optimistic are you about the future of brain tumor therapy?

A: I believe that in 10 or 15 years the field will be quite different. I believe that when we do imaging of a patient with a brain tumor, we will use a much more powerful form of MRI than we currently use. It will not only show structural images of where the tumor is and what it is pressing against, but the MRI itself – even without a biopsy -- will tell us the gene fingerprint of the tumor. And from this fingerprint, we will be able to know the type of tumor and its grade.

With knowledge of a patient’s gene fingerprint, we will be able to provide optimal treatment that is tailored to that individual patient. If there are seven common fingerprints in glioblastoma, for example, we may well end up with a particular therapy for each type. This treatment could come in the form of immunotherapy or a vaccine, or it could involve nanotechnology. It will probably be delivered intravenously. And whether it is involves immunotherapy or nanotechnology, it will be very specific for the tumor and will deliver some kind of anti-cancer agent only to the tumor cells.

updated: 06/2011