It is not a question here of preventing the appearance of the disease, but of treating it. Explanations.
The French company Transgene is at the origin of the development of a vaccine aimed at preventing the recurrence of cancers in the ENT sphere.
The results were presented at the ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) congress in Chicago, where excellent results of a clinical trial on lung cancer were also unveiled.
A personalized product according to the patient
Hedi Ben Brahim, CEO of Transgene and “dad” of the vaccine, told Le Parisien its particularity:
The product is unique for each patient. It will be useful for the person for whom it is designed, and will not be useful for another.
Among the 31 patients who participated in the phase I study, half received the vaccine, the other a placebo. And none of the patients who received the serum saw their cancer recur.
When the tumor is removed after surgery, it is genetically sequenced. It is then a Japanese artificial intelligence which, among the 3,000 possible mutations, will choose the 30 most at risk for each disease.
And these potential mutations therefore serve as the foundation for the development of the vaccine. Professor Christophe Le Tourneau, head of clinical trials at the Institut Curie in Paris, explains:
It will educate their immune system to develop antibodies capable of destroying cancer cells.
A world first
The vaccine is administered to the patient via twenty subcutaneous injections. And for Hedi Ben Brahim, he is a product “really effective which will train the immune system on the relevant points to recognize”.
This world first arouses real hope when we know that each year, 14,000 cases of ENT cancers (throat, tongue, larynx, etc.) are diagnosed, constituting the fourth cause of this disease in France. But also, that its recurrences are particularly complicated to fight.