By James Mulroy, PCWorld
Nov 22, 2011 3:01 PM
A cancer vaccine has just entered "Phase III" clinical trials at Jerusalem's Hadassah University Medical Center.
If the vaccine passes this phase, the drug will go to the appropriate
regulatory authorities in countries around the world. After passing
regulatory review, the drug would be able to enter the drug market
within a matter of about 6 years from now.
The vaccine, called ImMucin, is produced by Vaxil BioTherapeutics,
a clinical-stage company (so called because all of its products are in
the early stages of development and testing and not yet ready for the
market). ImMusin is synthetically derived from the MUC1 protein, which Vaxil says is associated with more than 90% of solid tumor cancers and a number of non-solid tumors.
According to the company, ImMucin is designed to work by stimulating the
patient's immune system to selectively target tumor cells. Vaxil says
that the preclinical studies have shown ImMucin to induce a stronger
immunity against MUC1 compard with other MUC1-derived derived vaccines.
The company says that ImMucin is designed to tell the body which cells
to attack, by enhancing the immune system so that it can track down and
destroy the cancer. Julian Levy, the CEO of Vaxil, told United With Israel,
"the body knows something is not quite right but the immune system
doesn’t know how to protect itself against the tumor like it does
against an infection or virus. This is because cancer cells are the
body’s own cells gone wrong."
ImMucin will be tested on a large number of patients (hundreds to
thousands of individuals) in the Phase 3 trials. If the drug proves
successful in trials and pases each country's regulations (the FDA in
the US), it may then go on the market in that country. After it reaches
the market, there are two more phases to evaluate the long-term effects
on patients and to further integrate it into widespread public
treatment.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/244216/cancer_vaccine_reaches_final_clinical_trials.html#tk.hp_new
