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Expert Financial Analysis and Reporting

Highlighting A New Report on Dendritic Cell Cancer Vaccines

Northwest Biotherapeutics’ (NWBO) DCVax-L and ImmunoCellular Therapeutics’ ICT-107 are dendritic cell cancer vaccines that are in phase II trials for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme, the most malignant form of brain cancer. Their dendritic cell technology is the same as that used by Dendreon’s Provenge. Importantly, NWBO and IMUC both have much more efficient manufacturing technologies than Dendreon and I don’t expect that they will encounter the onerous manufacturing and distribution costs that have plagued Provenge. I have just published a basic overview on the science underlying the products of these two small companies called The Rationale behind Dendritic Cell Cancer Vaccines and How They are Manufactured. This is intended to provide background for work that I will do on both companies. I have previously published a report on ImmunoCellular and am doing research on Northwest Biotherapeutics.

 

Both companies have produced very interesting results in small, preliminary trials as three year survival was 55% of patients for both DCVax-L and ICT-107; this compares to 16% for standard of care based on historical experience. Enthusiasm must be tempered by the small number of patients: 20 for DCVax-L and 16 for ICT-107. Also raising a caution flag is that the trials did not have a control group and were done at a single center. I recognize all the caveats and understand that similar early results in other cancer vaccines (using different technologies) were not duplicated in broader, controlled clinical trials, but I think that the results are still pretty striking and I am intrigued by the science underlying dendritic cell cancer vaccines. There will be more to come.


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