Bavarian Nordic's new MVA cancer vaccine

Bavarian Nordic of Denmark has reported promising results from aclinical study which began last year involving a therapeutic vaccine to treat malignant melanoma (Marketletter June 14, 1999), offering an alternative to the surgical removal of tumors. The MVA-BN vaccine contains a vector that is similar to a mutant gene coding for tyrosine in melanoma cells, and primary data from the first clinical study in which patients with late-stage melanoma were given the MVA-BN vaccine showed that an immune response was established or elevated against the cancerous cells.