Cleveland Clinic Launches New Clinical Trial of Vaccine for Prevention of Advanced Breast Cancer

Researchers at the Cleveland, Ohio-Cleveland Clinic have begun clinical trials of a vaccine that can prevent advanced breast cancer before it develops, the clinic announced Tuesday.

The proposed vaccine is aimed at potentially preventing triple-negative breast cancer, the most deadly form of the disease.

The clinic is an Anixa Biosciences, Inc. in a phase I study to determine the maximum dose of safe and effective vaccine for patients with early-stage triple-negative breast cancer. Is affiliated with.

There is a great need to improve treatment for triple-negative breast cancer. Triple-negative breast cancer usually lacks the biological properties to respond to hormone or targeted therapies.

About 15% to 20% of women diagnosed with breast cancer worldwide Triple negative breast cancer. This is a breast cancer that does not express the estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and HER2 / neu genes. Triple-negative cancers often require treatment to combat combination cancers, as most hormone therapies target one of three receptors.

“In the long run, we hope this will be given to healthy women and become a true preventative vaccine to prevent the development of triple-negative breast cancer, one of the least curative breast cancers.” Dr. G. Thomas Bad of the Institute and the principal investigator of the study said in a statement.

Triple-negative breast cancer accounts for only about 12-15% of all breast cancers, but the rate of death from breast cancer is disproportionately high and the recurrence rate is high. This form of breast cancer is twice as likely to occur in black women, and about 70% to 80% of breast cancers in women with a BRCA1 mutation are triple-negative breast cancer, the clinic says.

“This vaccine approach represents a potential new way to control breast cancer,” said Vincent Tuohy, the lead inventor of the vaccine and immunologist at the clinic’s Learner Institute, in a statement. ..

The clinic is Anixa Biosciences, Inc., a biotechnology company located in San Jose, California. Vaccine licensed to. Tuohy will receive a portion of the commercial revenue received by the clinic for this technology and will also retain the company’s personal capital.

The proposed vaccine activates the immune system against breast-specific breast-feeding proteins, which are present in the majority of triple-negative breast cancer, the clinic said. Vaccines also allow the immune system to prevent the growth of new tumors.

This Pentagon-sponsored study is based on a preclinical study led by Tuohy and first published in Nature Medicine.

Vaccine studies include 18 to 24 patients who have completed treatment for early-stage triple-negative breast cancer within the last three years and are currently free of tumors but at high risk of recurrence.

This study is open to non-clinic patients. Interested parties can find more information about this study, including a description and qualification criteria for this study. ClinicalTrials.gov Website https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04674306..

Study participants will be vaccinated three times every two weeks and will be closely monitored for side effects. The survey is scheduled to be completed in September.

Subsequent trials will involve healthy, cancer-free women who have decided to undergo voluntary bilateral mastectomy because of their high risk of developing breast cancer. Clinics say these women are usually at risk of developing triple-negative breast cancer because they have a mutation in either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, or are at high risk for all forms of breast cancer because of their family history. I have.

The vaccine strategy can be applied not only to other types of breast cancer, but also to ovarian and endometrial cancers, Tuohy said. If these vaccines are successful, physicians can control adult-onset cancers and extend their expected lifespan.