Study: Oncophage Appears to Aid Advanced Colorectal Cancer Patients

More than half of the patients with advanced colorectal cancer treated with Oncophage® appeared to benefit from the personalized therapeutic vaccine in a Phase II trial, according to researchers at Antigenics Inc.

Oncophage is called a personalized cancer vaccine because it is derived from each individual's tumor. It contains complexes of heat shock proteins -- the "antigenic fingerprint" of the patient's particular cancer -- and is designed to reprogram the body's immune system to target and destroy only cancer cells bearing this fingerprint.

In a report that appears in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, researchers said 52 percent of the 29 patients in the study who received Oncophage demonstrated significant immunological response -- which not only appeared to be correlated with clinical response but also was found to be an independent factor for prognosis.

In the trial, patients who responded immunologically to the vaccine had a two-year overall survival rate of 100 percent, compared with 50 percent for nonresponders, the researchers said.

They said those who responded to the vaccine had a disease-free survival rate of 51 percent, compared to 8 percent among nonresponders. Patients who demonstrated immune response to Oncophage had a 41 percent rate of recurrence compared with 92 percent among those who did not nonrespond.

"These findings provide encouraging support that immunological response to Oncophage vaccination may be associated with clinical benefit in this patient population," said Dr. Jonathan J. Lewis, chief medical officer of Antigenics.

Other sources: Clinical Cancer Research