This investigator-sponsored trial marks an expansion by the company into a second form of cancer. The trial will test Argos’ RNA loaded autologous dendritic cell vaccine among patients with Stage IV melanoma and will be conducted at the University Hospital of Erlangen in Erlangen, Germany.
Argos’ RNA-loaded dendritic cell vaccine is currently in a phase I/II corporate-sponsored clinical trial for renal cell cancer at five sites across the US and Canada. According to Dr Lothar Finke, chief medical officer and vice president of regulatory affairs for Argos, the company is applying the same technology and process to the melanoma trial.
“By using all of the patient’s tumor antigens to create a personalized therapeutic treatment, we are able to harness the ability of that patient’s immune system to fight the disease,” said Dr Finke.
“This approach differs fundamentally from other cancer vaccines in that it targets tumor antigens unique to each patient, bypassing the requirement to know the identity of and characterize those antigens. This technology is applicable to all types of cancer and allows expansion into new indications without reinventing the manufacturing process each time.”
To create the personalized vaccine, Argos scientists’ pair dendritic cells from the patient’s body with RNA amplified from the patient’s tumor, thereby making it specific to each person’s cancer. The vaccine is then put back into the patient’s body and stimulates the immune system to recognize and fight the cancer. With this approach, a large number of vaccine doses can be prepared from a single manufacturing run and only a small tumor specimen is required.