Cancer vaccines are an attractive immunotherapy because of their potential safety, specificity, and long-lasting response due to stimulation of immune memory.
Previous attempts to develop a cancer vaccine have focused on the use of certain proteins that are common in melanoma. However, because the genetic make-up of every patient’s tumor is different, these vaccines showed minimal clinical benefit.
Through our subsidiary, Elios Therapeutics, Orbis is developing the Tumor Lysate, Particle Only (TLPO) vaccine, an autologous (or personalized) therapeutic cancer vaccine designed to stimulate the immune system to recognize tumor cells and fight a patient’s specific cancer.
The vaccine is concurrently initiating a basket trial in patients with solid tumors and moving into a Phase 3 registrational trial for advanced stage melanoma patients based on a positive Phase IIb study showing the vaccine was safe and effective.
To date, Orbis’ personalized cancer vaccine has been proven safe through use in more than 300 patients with reduced toxicity and serious adverse events compared to other traditional cancer treatments.
With its ability to train the immune system to recognize a patient’s unique tumor-specific antigens, the vaccine is able to seek out and destroy any cells containing those antigens to prevent the cancer from metastasizing and protecting patients from disease recurrence.
Immuno-Oncology
The Development of Advanced Vaccine Technology
Video: Two of the earliest patients to undergo treatment with the vaccine, Mary Carol Abercrombie (22 years post-treatment) and Ray Merrill (8 years post-treatment), share their experience with others. Click on their names to watch the videos.
“I like that this is not off the shelf. I explain that this is a treatment that uses the patient’s own tumor cells and that is exciting to patients – the idea of medically Immunizing them against their own tumor.”
— Phase IIb Melanoma Clinical Trial Investigator