Therapeutic Efficacy of Generex Anti-Tumor Vaccine Demonstrated in Preclinical Animal Model

The preclinical studies were conducted in collaboration with Dr. Constantin Baxevanis at the Saint Savas Cancer Hospital in Athens, Greece. The results were presented in conjunction with interim results from ongoing Phase I clinical trials being conducted at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in patients with breast cancer. Antigen Express is developing a novel immunotherapeutic peptide vaccine for use in patients with tumors expressing the HER-2/neu oncogene. Roughly 75% of patients with breast cancer show some level of HER-2/neu expression in their tumors. While only 25% of breast cancers have levels of HER-2/neu expression high enough to be candidates for treatment with Herceptin® (a humanized monoclonal antibody directed at HER-2/neu), those cancers expressing lower levels are expected to be good candidates for active immunotherapy as is being pursued at Antigen Express. A significant percent of other types of cancer, including prostate and lung cancers, also express HER-2/neu. The recent studies clearly showed that CD4+ T helper cells stimulated with the Antigen Express vaccine potentiated the activity of tumor-specific cytotoxic T cells to the point that cures were observed in 40% of mice and significantly slower tumor growth was observed in the remaining mice. Together with the findings of good CD4+ T helper stimulation in patients receiving the vaccine in the clinic, these studies point to the therapeutic potential of the vaccine. "Source":[ http://www.bio.com/industryanalysis/industryanalysis_news.jhtml?cid=19900093]

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