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news.Northwest Biotherapeutics has reported that a Phase I/II clinical trial using DCVax-L, a personalized immunotherapy for cancer, has begun at the Abramson Cancer Center and the University of Pennsylvania Center for Research on early detection and cure of ovarian cancer.
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The first patients have been enrolled and have undergone initial treatment steps in preparation for receiving DCVax-L. The trial involves two sequential studies, and comprises an innovative combination of multiple treatment modalities. DCVax-L forms the cornerstone of the treatment regimen, and is complemented by administration of low doses of certain existing approved drugs to help improve the immune system environment, as well as by adoptive transfer of patients’s DCVax-L primed T cells.
In the first study being conducted by NWBT and Penn, patients will first undergo standard surgery to reduce their tumor burden. Patients will then receive limited doses of two existing drugs to improve the immune system environment and modify the tumor vasculature. This multi-modal ovarian cancer trial has been designed to maintain minimal-toxicity approach, by using only low doses of the two drugs complementing DCVax-L for preparatory effects.
Following the preparatory treatments, the patients in this ovarian cancer trial will receive a series of three immunizations with DCVax-L, each two weeks apart, while continuing to receive the low doses of two drugs intended to keep the immune system and the tumor microenvironment in a beneficial condition.