Combination of chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy in patients with non-small cell lung cancer; improving cancer vaccine efficacy.

GemVax is in the international forefront in the development of peptide based active immunotherapy for treatment of cancer. GV1001 is a telomerase based cancer vaccine which in principle can act as a universal cancer vaccine. GV1001 is GemVax' lead com pound. The product has been developed in close collaboration with the Radium Hospital, Ullevål University Hospital and Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm and with support from The Norwegian Research Council. GV1001 has been tested in Phase I/II clinical studi es in more than 100 patients. Promising results have been obtained in patients with NSCLC. The treatment was well tolerated and immune responses against GV1001 were detected in 11 of 24 evaluable patients during the primary regimen. Results have been pres ented at ASCO, 2003, Cancer Vaccines, New York, October 2005. It is increasingly being realized that it is the tumour itself and characteristics of tumour environment, which impairs the immune effector function. In order to improve the effect of cancer vaccines the intrinsic resistance must be overcome. Several groups have demonstrated that radiation and chemotherapy may be beneficial to overcome immune suppression (killing of T-regulatory cells), enhance penetration of tumour stromal tissue and that angiogenesis will promote "cross-presentation" of tumour antigens in antigen presenting cells in the microenvironment and thereby increase the number of effector T-cells. Studies in animal models and clinical observations indicate that chemotherapy and/ or radiation administered before immunotherapy increase the vaccination efficacy. The treatment initiates an inflammatory reaction which may reduce immune suppression and tumour cell death caused by chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy will result in so-calle d cross presentation of tumour antigens (increases the effect of T-cell vaccines).