Encouraging results. The first data on personalized vaccines, created using artificial intelligence tools, to prevent relapses of ENT cancers were revealed this Wednesday. Developed by French biotech Transgene, these treatments provide real hope for patients with cancers of the head and neck regions, such as the nose, throat or ears.
In a press release, the Curie Institute welcomed these results. “Our results show that the personalized vaccine induced specific immune responses and led to low relapse rates,” detailed Dr Olivier Lantz, deputy director of the Immunity and Cancer Unit.
No relapse
Concretely, the vaccine is individual and injected several times, as Olivier Lantz, head of the Clinical Immunology laboratory at the Institut Curie, explained to BFMTV. “It is a therapeutic vaccine, in other words it aims to educate the immune system so that it kills tumor cells which are disseminated in the body, to prevent recurrence.”
To date, none of the patients treated with this vaccine have had a relapse. “We are pleased to observe that all patients treated with TG4050 are still in remission after 18.6 months of median follow-up, while 3 out of 16 patients relapsed in the control arm during this same period,” commented Dr. Alessandro Riva, Chairman and CEO of Transgene.
Although this is only the first phase of this clinical study, the results are more than promising. The start of the second phase of the trial is planned for the second quarter of 2024. If this is conclusive, the vaccine could be adapted to other cancers.