International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference: Early Study Results of Vaccine in HER2-Positive Cancers
Posted: Thursday, October 18, 2018
In an early-phase clinical trial, several patients with advanced metastatic HER2-positive cancers saw a clinical benefit from a therapeutic cancer vaccine targeting HER2-expressing cancers, including prostate, breast, colorectal, ovarian, lung, gastroesophageal, and bladder. The vaccine consists of autologous dendritic cells genetically modified with an adenovirus to produce parts of the HER2 protein.
“We are using a vaccine approach to generate an immune response to HER2, which is found at high levels on and drives the growth of several types of cancer,” stated Jay A. Berzofsky, MD, PhD, chief of the Vaccine Branch at the Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, in an American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) press release. The results of the phase I study were presented recently by Dr. Berzofsky at the International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference: Translating Science into Survival in New York City (Abstract A004), which was hosted by the AACR, the Cancer Research Institute, the Association for Cancer Immunology, and the European Academy of Tumor Immunology.
The researchers enrolled trastuzumab-naive patients with various metastatic HER2-positive cancers who had been treated with at least one line of standard therapy. Following dose escalation, a clinical benefit was observed in 6 of the 11 evaluable patients (54%), including 1 complete response lasting 89 weeks, 1 partial response lasting 24 weeks, and 4 cases of stable disease. Adverse reactions were primarily related to the injection site and did not require treatment.
The next phase of the trial includes an increased maximum dose and is open to patients who have previously been treated with a HER2-targeted agent, mostly patients with metastatic breast and gastric cancers. Researchers also intend to study the vaccine in combination with a checkpoint inhibitor to induce T-cell responses that turn “cold” tumors into “hot” ones, rendering them amenable to checkpoint blockade immunotherapy.
