Immunotherapy or biological therapy is the treatment of disease by activating or suppressing the immune system. Immunotherapies designed to elicit or amplify an immune response are classified as activation immunotherapies, while immunotherapies that reduce or suppress are classified as suppression immunotherapies. Immunotherapy is under preliminary research for its potential to treat various forms of cancer.
A glioma is a type of primary tumor that starts in the glial cells of the brain or spinal cord. They are cancerous but some are extremely slow to develop. Gliomas comprise about 30 percent of all brain tumors and central nervous system tumours, and 80 percent of all malignant brain tumours.
A cancer vaccine, or oncovaccine, is a vaccine that either treats existing cancer or prevents development of cancer. Vaccines that treat existing cancer are known as therapeutic cancer vaccines or tumor antigen vaccines. Some of the vaccines are "autologous", being prepared from samples taken from the patient, and are specific to that patient.
Glioblastoma, previously known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is the most aggressive and most common type of cancer that originates in the brain, and has a very poor prognosis for survival. Initial signs and symptoms of glioblastoma are nonspecific. They may include headaches, personality changes, nausea, and symptoms similar to those of a stroke. Symptoms often worsen rapidly and may progress to unconsciousness.
Cancer immunotherapy (immuno-oncotherapy) is the stimulation of the immune system to treat cancer, improving the immune system's natural ability to fight the disease. It is an application of the fundamental research of cancer immunology (immuno-oncology) and a growing subspecialty of oncology.
An oncolytic virus is a virus that preferentially infects and kills cancer cells. As the infected cancer cells are destroyed by oncolysis, they release new infectious virus particles or virions to help destroy the remaining tumour. Oncolytic viruses are thought not only to cause direct destruction of the tumour cells, but also to stimulate host anti-tumour immune system responses. Oncolytic viruses also have the ability to affect the tumor micro-environment in multiple ways.
Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have varied therapeutic uses. It is possible to create a mAb that binds specifically to almost any extracellular target, such as cell surface proteins and cytokines. They can be used to render their target ineffective, to induce a specific cell signal, to cause the immune system to attack specific cells, or to bring a drug to a specific cell type.
Northwest Biotherapeutics, Inc. is a development-stage American pharmaceutical company headquartered in Maryland that focuses on developing immunotherapies against different types of cancer. It was founded in 1996 by Alton L. Boynton.
Vaccine therapy is a type of treatment that uses a substance or group of substances to stimulate the immune system to destroy a tumor or infectious microorganisms such as bacteria or viruses.
Asunercept is a soluble CD95-Fc fusion protein which is in clinical development for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Asunercept has been granted orphan drug status for the treatment of GBM and MDS in the EU and the US. It has also received PRIME designation by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for the treatment of GBM.
Neutron capture therapy (NCT) is a type of radiotherapy for treating locally invasive malignant tumors such as primary brain tumors, recurrent cancers of the head and neck region, and cutaneous and extracutaneous melanomas. It is a two-step process: first, the patient is injected with a tumor-localizing drug containing the stable isotope boron-10 (10B), which has a high propensity to capture low energy "thermal" neutrons. The neutron cross section of 10B is 1,000 times more than that of other elements, such as nitrogen, hydrogen, or oxygen, that occur in tissue. In the second step, the patient is radiated with epithermal neutrons, the sources of which in the past have been nuclear reactors and now are accelerators that produce higher energy epithermal neutrons. After losing energy as they penetrate tissue, the resultant low energy "thermal" neutrons are captured by the 10B atoms. The resulting decay reaction yields high-energy alpha particles that kill the cancer cells that have taken up enough 10B.
ALECSAT technology is a novel method of epigenetic cancer immunotherapy being used by the company CytoVac. It uses a patient's own immune system to target tumor cells in prostate cancer, glioblastomas, and potentially pancreatic cancer. ALECSAT research, directed by Alexei Kirken and Karine Dzhandzhugazyan, has led to several clinical trials.
Adegramotide (DSP-7888) is an experimental drug intended for treatment of various hematologic malignancies and solid tumors, including glioblastoma multiforme. It is a peptide vaccine and has finished phase I clinical trials and phase II clinical trials.
The dendritic cell-based cancer vaccine is an innovation in therapeutic strategy for cancer patients.
Neoepitopes are a class of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) bounded peptides. They represent the antigenic determinants of neoantigens. Neoepitopes are recognized by the immune system as targets for T cells and can elicit immune response to cancer.
Marcela V. Maus is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cellular Immunotherapy Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. She works on immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer, using genetically engineered T cells to target malignancies (cancer).
Donald M. O'Rourke is an American neurosurgeon and the John Templeton, Jr., MD Professor of Neurosurgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1983, and attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania where he also completed neurosurgical residency training.
Individualized cancer immunotherapy, also referred to as individualized immuno-oncology, is a novel concept for therapeutic cancer vaccines that are truly personalized to a single individual.
Cellular adoptive immunotherapy is a type of immunotherapy. Immune cells such as T-cells are usually isolated from patients for expansion or engineering purposes and reinfused back into patients to fight diseases using their own immune system. A major application of cellular adoptive therapy is cancer treatment, as the immune system plays a vital role in the development and growth of cancer. The primary types of cellular adoptive immunotherapies are T cell therapies. Other therapies include CAR-T therapy, CAR-NK therapy, macrophage-based immunotherapy and dendritic cell therapy.
Whole-cell vaccines are a type of vaccine that has been prepared in the laboratory from entire cells. Such vaccines simultaneously contain multiple antigens to activate the immune system. They induce antigen-specific T-cell responses.
