Breast Cancer May Be Included in Expanded Vaccine Clinical Trials

A therapeutic vaccine already under phase III clinical trials for use against lung cancer and melanoma may also be effective for treating particularly aggressive and drug-resistant forms of breast cancer.

Investigators from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (New York, NY, USA) used signature-sequencing data, together with nine publicly available gene expression datasets to analyze and compare the activity of CT-X genes in 1,600 breast cancer samples. They reported in the July 27, 2009, online edition of the journal Proceedings of the [U.S.] National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that about 50% of primary ER- (estrogen receptor)-negative and triple-negative (lacking estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 receptors) breast cancers expressed members of either or both the MAGEA and NY-ESO-1/CTAG1B families of CT-X genes. These tumors have a generally poor prognosis and few therapy options.

A major improvement in the dismal prospect for this population of breast cancer patients may rest with GlaxoSmithKline (Uxbridge, UK), which licensed MAGEA3 and NY-ESO-1 from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and is currently conducting phase III clinical trials of a MAGEA3-based cancer vaccine in nonsmall cell lung cancer and melanoma.

Clinical trials may soon be extended to breast cancer, according to contributing author Dr. Andrew Simpson, scientific director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. "Vaccines targeting MAGEA3 are already in phase III trials and collaborative studies have demonstrated the safety of different forms of the NY-ESO-1 antigen in phase I and II trials in a variety of tumor types.”

Related Links:
Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research
GlaxoSmithKline