Argentine-Cuban consortium tests vaccine against cancer in six countries
01:43 P.M BUENOS AIRES, 20 Feb 2008 (AFP) – A private and public consortium will start a clinical trial with over 700 patients in six countries, to test a therapeutic vaccine that yielded encouraging results so far, as to life extension of cancer patients.
“This is not what we commonly know a prevention vaccine. In this case, it is a therapeutic vaccine that will be used as a complementary therapy along with conventional medical treatments, such as surgery or chemotherapy in patients with lung cancer”, explained scientist Daniel Alonso to the AFP.
Alonso is director of the Molecular Oncology Laboratory at the University of Quilmes (in the southern area of Buenos Aires), one of the medical institutions integrating the consortium along with the Molecular Immunology Center in La Habana and Elea, the Argentine private laboratory.
The original project was started in 1995 by the Cuban institute that produces the monoclonal antibody, and Elea, the fourth laboratory in total sales in Argentina with a strong presence in the gynecology field, and which has started an oncology division.
"It should be clarified that this approach to cancer treatment is not infallible, but we hope it can help to improve the patients’ life expectancy”, insisted Alonso, aware of the expectations this kind of announcements may raise in patients with cancer.
When referring to the difficulties to attack the tumors, he indicated that “one of the hopes we have is to turn cancer into a chronic disease, such as hypertension: a cure cannot be found but the patients can keep it under control.”
He added that residual disease may cause patients to relapse after surgery or chemotherapy: “We intend the vaccine to stimulate the immune system to attack any residual disease thus prolonging and improving the patient’s life expectancy”, he said.
The consortium has already complied with the in vitro development test requirement in animal experimentation and patients, both in Cuba and Buenos Aires. In the capital city of Argentina, the University of Buenos Aires and several public hospitals participated in said test.
By the middle of this year –Alonso estimated- the decisive stage will commence, that is, the phase III trial that aims at administering the vaccine to patients from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, India, Malaysia and Singapore. This trial will recruit a larger amount of patients.
"The idea is for this trial to commence simultaneously in these countries, and we aim at recruiting a total number of 760 patients, approximately”, said Alonso who also is member of Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) (National Council of Science and Technology Research).
He said that a phase III trial can continue for several years and he estimated that “being optimistic, one can imagine that in a three-to-five year period, the encouraging vaccine effect seen in previous trial phases can be confirmed and the product marketed.”
Alonso highlighted another innovative feature: the consortium established each party’s rights over the products according to several parameters, and he further explained that this implied a percentage of eventual future earnings that the public institutions involved may obtain.
