We would love to hear your thoughts about our site and services, please take our survey here.
London South East prides itself on its community spirit, and in order to keep the chat section problem free, we ask all members to follow these simple rules. In these rules, we refer to ourselves as "we", "us", "our". The user of the website is referred to as "you" and "your".
By posting on our share chat boards you are agreeing to the following:
The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. As a user you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. You agree that we have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic or board at any time should we see fit. You agree that we have the right to remove any post without notice. You agree that we have the right to suspend your account without notice.
Please note some users may not behave properly and may post content that is misleading, untrue or offensive.
It is not possible for us to fully monitor all content all of the time but where we have actually received notice of any content that is potentially misleading, untrue, offensive, unlawful, infringes third party rights or is potentially in breach of these terms and conditions, then we will review such content, decide whether to remove it from this website and act accordingly.
Premium Members are members that have a premium subscription with London South East. You can subscribe here.
London South East does not endorse such members, and posts should not be construed as advice and represent the opinions of the authors, not those of London South East Ltd, or its affiliates.
Thanks Burble - good to have the insights.
Come on Modi 1
Some additional background to the DM cancer vaccine article.
This trial mentioned in the article (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03632941?term=lyerly&draw=2&rank=7) is a phase II combination trial of a virus replicon particle vaccine expressing HER2 combined with a checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (keytruda) split into three arms. A) - VRP-HER2 alone, B) - keytruda alone and C) combination.
Interestingly, this trial (and work previous see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30635338/) has been done using the VRP particles and not naked mRNA as we would find in the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. VRP Particles basically are a novel alphavirus vector, encoding the antigen target. So technically the trial isn't a straight mRNA vaccine despite what the DM has said. It is a VRP vaccine which induces the dendritic cells to produce mRNA.
In their phase 1 trial they had two cohorts - one with the VRP-HER2 vaccination alone and the other with VRP-HER2 and standard of care anti-HER2 therapies. These were well tolerated with no dose limiting effects however 'In the current study, neutralizing antibodies against VRP were again detected at high levels after immunization'. e.g. the body was mounting an immune response against the delivery vector - meaning repeat immunisations may not lead to clinical benefit.
Of the results from this this stood out 'In cohort 1 (VRP-HER2 only), there were no responses and the median Progression Free Survival was 1.8 months and the median Overall Survival was 50.2 months (Figure 4A). In cohort 2 (VRP-HER2 and standard of care), there was one partial response (PR) and 7 with initially stable disease (SD), two of whom had continued SD at time of manuscript submission. The median PFS for cohort 2 was 3.6 months and the median OS was 32.7 months.'
Whilst not wanting to compare apples to pears, consider these results against SCIB1 results. Being a DNA vaccine there is no anti-vector immune response which means you can dose multiple times without seeing a decrease in effectiveness. Plus SCIB1 worked on it's own as a monotherapy. We'll soon see what SCIB1+Keytruda looks like in the clinic.
To me it looks like weak reporting by the DM. Yes Duke have a cancer vaccine in trials with 39 participants. But it's a VRP particle. The chief investigator most likely is looking at using mRNA based vaccines to repeat this work or develop an mRNA vaccine for a different target. But from a quick glance this isn't the same trial as the DM is leading you to believe. The VRP results also don't look as good as a monotherapy compared to SCIB1 which we have results for. Oh and on top of that, we then have moditope which could prove better than all of this.
An inset section in the link : "What is a cancer vaccine? Are any available? A cancer vaccine aims to recruit the immune system to fight off the illness. Cancer is not triggered by a virus, but occurs when cells start dividing un-controllably due to a mutation. These cells may have a unique antigen on their surface compared to healthy ones.
Cancer vaccines display this to the immune system, sparking an immune response. Scientists say this then leads to the immune system hunting out and killing cancerous cells. Only one cancer vaccine — for prostate cancer — is available to date. It involves white blood cells being extracted from the body and exposed to antigens from cancerous cells. These are then re-administered where scientists hope they will fight off the illness. But the treatment, available to late stage cancer patients, does not appear to lead to tumors shrinking and only gives men who receive it a few additional months to live."
This won't have escaped notice here - "does not appear to lead to tumors shrinking".
Stand up Modi 1, (hopefully).
Tick tock . . .
Here's some news of a 'cancer vaccine', (but not Scancell's) . . . . https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10728807/Cancer-vaccine-using-tech-Covid-jabs-game-changer-scientists-say.html
Good coverage of a project in it's VERY early stages but still no wider coverage of the Modi 1 trial since the RNS.
Tick tock . . . .
I have been invested here since 2008 as have others, I remember the share price jump on news of the discovery of the Moditope if you had said then that it would take a further decade to get here I would never have believed it to be so. But here we are with 20 centres open for Moditope trials the huge investment from both Redmile and Vulpes and our other product's in the pipeline its been a long haul and no denying my investment if successful will certainly compensate financially but Oh how I await the news that Moditope does what it says on the tin and for those people who will benefit from what I think was described as a Serendipitous discovery at the time GLA