Biovest, a subsidiary of Accentia Biopharmaceuticals, has announced that BiovaxID, a personalized therapeutic anti-cancer vaccine, is available on a named-patient basis in Europe.
A named-patient program is a compassionate-use drug supply program, under which physicians are permitted to supply investigational drugs to qualifying patients.
Following compliance with local regulatory protocols, BiovaxID will be supplied by Idis to European healthcare professionals. It is for the treatment of follicular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and potentially for other B-cell blood cancers, such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia, mantle cell lymphoma and multiple myeloma.
Volker Diehl, Professor of Medicine at University of Cologne, said: “The recently reported Phase III results, while impressive, did not include a BiovaxID maintenance regimen consisting of periodic booster shots. Such a maintenance booster regimen may be key in continuing to stimulate a robust and enduring immune response, thus further improving results, and perhaps even resulting in durable remissions for some patients.”
Biovest is planning to include multiple booster vaccines for potential maintenance therapy purposes, as part of the vaccine delivery for prescriptions processed under the named-patient program.