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news.Breakthrough Therapeutics has presented positive interim data for a novel vaccine known as VAX100 for patients with persistent chronic myeloid leukemia who are already taking Novartis' Gleevac for their condition.
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VAX100 is a BCR-ABL peptide vaccine designed to reduce persistent disease in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) who have had stable disease during conventional therapy.
The study included 21 patients with stable residual disease whom had no improvement of their residual disease for a minimum of 12 months after treatment with Gleevac.
The drug induced a prompt immunological response in 17 of 18 patients who showed peptide specific T cell response. Six of the 10 patients beginning with cytogenetic evidence of CML reached a complete cytogenetic response and three achieved undetectable levels of the target bcr-abl transcript.
“While Imatinib (Gleevac) has revolutionized the treatment of CML, not all patients achieve a complete cytogenetic remission and most patients maintain detectable CML at the molecular level,” commented David Scheinberg, chairman of molecular pharmacology & chemistry at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and an inventor of the BCR-ABL peptide vaccine. “These data demonstrate the potential for BCR-ABL vaccines to further increase the proportion of patients who achieve a reduction, and possibly elimination of residual disease.”
This two-year follow-up data was presented at the annual American Society of Hematology Meeting held in Atlanta.