Cancer mRNA vaccine shows potential in brain tumor

Raises possibility of conquering cancer

CureVac’s mRNA vaccine shows effect against glioblastoma...First-in-human study

Immunomic Therapeutics, IM Biologics makes a bid to develop vaccines that can treat brain tumor

Therapeutic cancer vaccines have been showing promise in central nervous system diseases.

 

CureVac recently confirmed the safety of its messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccine, CVGBM, in glioblastoma in a Phase I clinical trial.

 

Immunomic Therapeutics and IM Biologics have also taken up the challenge of developing cancer vaccines for brain tumors.

 

Cancer vaccines are therapeutic vaccines that treat cancer by administering cancer cell antigens to patients and activating the immune system rather than prevention vaccines.

 

Like conventional vaccines, cancer vaccines also work with the same mechanism of action, activating the body’s immune response and inducing immunogenic cell death.

 

Major pharmaceutical and biotech companies are focusing on maximizing the treatment effect rather than prevention, and are using strategies to increase their vaccine’s commercialization potential by combining its use with anticancer drugs.

 

Cancer vaccines with various mechanisms of action are being developed...targets brain tumors According to industry sources on the 23rd, Germany's CureVac recently unveiled the first-in-human trial results of its mRNA cancer vaccine candidate 'CVGBM' in treating glioblastoma.

 

Glioblastoma is a type of glioma, a malignant tumor that occurs primarily in the brain.

 

Glioblastoma has a poor prognosis, with a 5-year survival rate of a mere 5% despite surgery and chemoradiotherapy.

 

The average survival time is only about one year.

 

CureVac’s CVGBM is an investigational therapeutic mRNA-based vaccine encoding 8 epitopes derived from tumor-associated antigens with potential relevance in glioblastoma.

 

An mRNA cancer vaccine constructs abnormal proteins (neoantigens) produced by cancer cells.

 

The body's immune cells then produce antibodies to respond to them, which then kills cancer cells.

 

CureVac is currently conducting a Phase I trial in MGMT-unmethylated glioblastoma, which is known to have a poor prognosis.

 

As of February 29, 2024, 16 patients with glioblastoma have been enrolled in the trial.

 

The primary endpoints were safety, tolerability, and dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs) in CVGBM.

 

Immunogenicity was included as an exploratory endpoint.

 

Clinical results showed that the most common treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs) were chills (13 patients), fever (12 patients), headache (12 patients), and fatigue (11 patients).

 

Most patients experienced mild-to-moderate symptoms.

 

“CVGBM was generally well tolerated with an acceptable safety profile,” the researchers concluded.

 

”Based on all available safety data, the dose selected for clinical expansion was 100 μg.

 

Patients did not reach the maximum tolerated dose.” CureVac is continuing to monitor clinical progress and plans to present the first immunogenicity data once results are confirmed.

 

Meanwhile, a U.S.

 

company, Immunomic Therapeutics has completed a Phase II clinical trial of its glioblastoma cancer vaccine, ITI-1000.

 

ITI-1000 is a cancer vaccine based on Immunomic's cell therapy vaccine platform (UNITE) that activates “dendritic cells,” the immune system's watchdogs, to kill tumors.

 

ITI-1000 activates dendritic cells to recognize the ‘pp65′ protein of cytomegalovirus, which is present in glioblastoma and alerts other key immune cells when a pathogen invades the body.

 

Currently, Immunomic has completed its Phase II clinical trial and is in the process of analyzing the data.

 

Published clinical results to date have shown that ITI-1000’s median overall survival (OS) is over 30 months.

 

Companies in Korea are also developing cancer vaccines targeting brain tumors.

 

IM Biologics' glioblastoma cancer vaccine candidate 'IMB-402' was selected as a new project of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's ‘Material Parts Technology Development Project.’ IMB-402 is a cancer vaccine candidate that selectively proliferates and activates glioblastoma (GBM)-specific T cells by applying an ampeptide-HLA complex to ePENDY, an IgM antibody-based multimer platform.

 

IM Biologics designed IMB-402 with additional co-stimulatory factors to prevent activated T cells from falling into a lethargic state.

 

IMB-402 is currently in the candidate optimization phase, and the company plans to secure the candidate and conduct non-clinical studies through this project.