Biomira Presents Phase II Cancer Vaccine Data

Canadian biotechnology company Biomira has presented interim results of Canadian Phase II studies of its therapeutic anticancer vaccine, Theratope, at the second annual New Advances in Vaccine Technologies and Applications conference in Bethesda, USA. The trials included patients with late-stage breast and ovarian cancer.

Although the trials are still ongoing, Biomira's director of immunology, Mark Reddish, said at the meeting that when the interim data from trials of the vaccine in breast and ovarian cancer patients is compared to historical comparators it suggests that the vaccine may be as good as, and possibly better than, cytotoxic chemotherapy. However, Theratope has none of the serious toxicities seen with conventional chemotherapeutic agents.

In his presentation, entitled Active Specific Immunotherapy of Adenocarcinomas Using Cancer-Associated Antigens, Dr Reddish noted that because more than 50% of patients are still alive, data on the median survival time is not yet available. Mature data is available on 40 patients with colorectal cancer, however; these results suggest that the median survival is 14.4 months, which parallels historical data obtained from several previous clinical trials for this type of tumor.