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Testing Vaccines for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma

Summary & Participants

Vaccines for cancer are no longer futuristic medicine. See how people with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are on the cutting edge of research.

Medically Reviewed On: June 11, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: There are times when medicine offers up hope for an advance that might change the course of a disease. Such is the case with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and a new vaccine therapy which Doctors hope can prolong remissions and extend survival.

RONALD LEVY, MD: Chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The standard treatments can make the tumor shrink, can make it go away, but it's temporary and it eventually does come back. And this vaccine (we hope) will keep it from coming back.

ANNOUNCER: Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, is particularly suited to a vaccine.

DAVID FISHER, MD: We know that antibodies attack things and help us with our immune system. Everyone's lymphoma has a specific antibody, because all the cells are produced as a clone, they're all the same, because they're cancer cells. We call that antibody idiotype.

And every patient has a unique idiotype. You have to sort of put a flag on those cells and help the body recognize that those are indeed unwanted cells. We can take tumor cells, we can pull out the idiotype antibody, we can purify it and we can give it back to the patient to work as an immune booster, sort of like a vaccine.

RONALD LEVY, MD: It's kind of like using the immune system to go after the immune system. It's fighting fire with fire in a sense

ANNOUNCER: What's innovative about this approach - personalized immunotherapy - is that that the vaccine will be individualized - made for each patient from his or her own tumor cells.

RONALD LEVY, MD: The vaccine is custom-made for each person, from their own tumor. And it's only usable in that one person. So it's made from their tumor, from their own tumor cell and it's given back to them and they're the only one that can benefit from this vaccine that's made from their own tumor

ANNOUNCER: For any new therapy, a series of trials must be done.

DAVID FISHER, MD: Phase I is where we give a drug and we just look to see if it's safe. Phase II is we start to use the drug with a dose that we think that is safe based on the phase I trials and look to see is there any evidence of activity.

ANNOUNCER: Several Phase II trials of vaccine immunotherapy are ongoing. Results from completed Phase II trials were very promising.

RONALD LEVY, MD: We saw from those phase II trials that patients can make an immune response against their own tumor, and that they can stay in remission a long time, and that it's even better if they make that immune response. Not all of them make an immune response, the ones who do, have an exceedingly long time staying in remission and staying alive.

ANNOUNCER: The vaccines in the completed Phase II trials are now in phase III trials, the final step before a drug is approved. One Phase III trial is sponsored by a company named Genitope and a second, by the National Cancer Institute.

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