A Publication for Baylor Scott & White Health’ s Oncology Program
Dr. Zurawski, one of the authors of the study, said HPV typically starts as a mild infection.“ But the virus can remain latent. In a significant number of cases, the virus has the ability, over time, to cause some cells that are infected to become cancerous,” he said.
According to the CDC, HPV is thought to be responsible for more than 90 percent of anal and cervical cancers, about 70 percent of vaginal and vulvar cancers, and more than 60 percent of penile cancers. Cancers of the head and neck are
While this vaccine is currently in preclinical testing at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas for head and neck cancer, this technology holds the promise of benefiting patients with other types of cancer as well. According to the paper in Cancer Immunology Research,“ Data from this study strongly support the development of CD40- targeting vaccines for other cancers in the future.”
Dr. Zurawski expects to start production soon of the HPV vaccine that will be administered to humans. Vaccine manufacturing will be performed by the Baylor Scott & White Health production facility in Temple, Texas, part of the Scott & White Cancer Institute.
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Immune Therapies Against Cancer
Figure 2. Targeting CD40 for HPV-Related Cancer
often caused by tobacco and alcohol. However, according to the CDC, recent studies show that about 70 percent of cancers of the oropharynx may be linked to HPV and that many cancers of the oropharynx may be caused by a combination of tobacco, alcohol and HPV.
“ CD40 is a potent activating receptor on the dendritic cells that gets the T-cells really excited, and in some cases, proliferating,” Dr. Zurawski said.“ Studies at BIIR have found that activation of the CD40 receptor is particularly good at programming a kind of immune response that gets a type of T-cell called cytotoxic lymphocytes, or CD8 T-cells, expanded in an antigen-specific manner.”
Adapted from Cancer Immunology Research 2016 Oct; 4( 10): 823-834
Baylor Scott & White Research Institute( BSWRI) is contracting with Charles River Laboratories in Scotland to perform preclinical safety studies and has licensed the intellectual property to BSWRI-owned Denceptor Therapeutics Limited in Cambridge, England. Denceptor will generate investments to fund this and possibly other dendritic celltargeting vaccines to address other types of cancer.
“ We anticipate that this will bring new cancer clinical trials with dendritic celltargeting vaccines to Baylor University Medical Center,” Dr. Zurawski said.“ The idea of the company [ Denceptor ] is to provide money to allow development of early phase clinical trials of a number of different dendritic cell-targeting vaccine approaches.”
If those trials are successful, he said, BSWRI and Denceptor should be able to attract pharmaceutical partners that would enable later-phase clinical trials. These trials hopefully would lead to approval by the US Food and Drug Administration and eventual commercialization.
“ The next cancer types being considered for similar dendritic cell-targeting vaccines are breast cancer and pancreatic cancer,” Dr. Zurawski said.