Patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer or ovarian cancer showed a positive response to treatment with a recombinant poxviral vaccine, according to a trial published in Clinical Cancer Research.
Lead researcher James Gulley, MD, PhD, director and deputy chief of the clinical trials group at the Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology at the National Cancer Institute said, “With this vaccine, we can clearly generate immune responses that lead to clinical responses in some patients.”
Gulley and colleagues assigned monthly vaccinations of the PANVAC vaccine, which contains transgenes for MUC-1, CEA, and 3 T-cell costimulatory molecules, to 26 heavily pretreated patients. Of the enrolled participants, 21 had previously received at least 3 chemotherapy regimens.
Results show a median time to progression of 2.5 months and a median overall survival of 13.7 months for the 12 patients diagnosed with breast cancer. Additionally, median time to progression was 2 months and median overall survival was 15 months for the 14 patients with ovarian cancer.
According to Gulley, “The sustained benefit seen in some patients in this study underscores the potential for therapeutic vaccines to impact clinical outcomes without toxicity. However, more studies in the appropriate patient populations are required to adequately assess efficacy.”
Source: AACR.