Good
News! New Cancer Vaccine Kills
Lymphoma,
Now In Phase III Clinical Trials
Why
fight cancer with chemotherapy or
radiation when you can teach the
immune
system to do it for you? Sound
far-fetched? In fact, cancer
vaccines have
already arrived. We’ve recently
reported
on Provenge, a new vaccine that
rewires
your body’s own defenses to wipe
out
prostate cancer. Now, Accentia
Biopharmaceuticals and Biovest
International have developed a
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL)
vaccine
that teaches the body’s immune
system to
identify and destroy tumor cells
while
leaving healthy tissue intact. The
vaccine, called BiovaxID, is
already in
Phase III clinical trials. The
vaccine has
already passed Phase I and II
clinical
trials with promising results:
previous
studies have shown that BiovaxID
significantly increases both the
time
interval between relapses (44.2
months, as
compared with 30.6 months in a
placebo
group) as well as patients’
overall
survival rates. In some cases, the
vaccine
reportedly clears cancer
completely from
the body. Phase III trials have
expanded
the subject pool, and are
currently
studying the vaccine’s long-term
effectiveness on 375 NHL patients.
If all
goes well, BiovaxID will then be
passed on
to the FDA for market approval.