Vaccine immunotherapy for immune suppressed patients

Patent Number: 7,182,942

Cancer vaccines have had a checkered past. This is primarily because numerous experimental approaches that demonstrated animal efficacy could not be translated into humans. Since numerous animal models are in-bred and involve carcinogenesis that is unnaturally “fast” (e.g. either a cell line is injected or huge amounts of carcinogens are administered) it is likely that these models do not represent the human situation in which tumors take years to grow, develop resistance mechanisms, and figure out ways of immune modulating the host.

The current patent has one issued claim that covers a “natural cytokine mix” with effective amounts of cyclophosphamide and indomethacine. This approach is attractive since cyclophosphamide not only has direct antitumor properties, but is also capable of inhibiting tumor angiogenesis when used at low concentrations. Additionally, cyclophosphamide is capable of selectively killing T regulatory cells, a type of cell that is involved in cancer suppression of the immune system. The use of indomethacine is primarily to inhibit PGE-2 produced by the tumor. PGE-2 of course is also involved in suppression of the immune system by cancer. The advantage of using a “natural cytokine mix” is that lower concentrations of individual cytokines may be used to obtain the same immune modulatory effect without having to induce “cytokine sickness” in the patient.

View this patent on the USPTO website.