The University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute is joining a consortium of organizations in Europe to develop a completely novel approach to fighting cancer.
The Glioma Actively Personalized Vaccine Consortium, which is supported by a grant from the European Union, is the first initiative aimed at clinically developing biomarker-guided actively personalized vaccines, or APVACs, to treat cancer patients.
According to a release from BioNTech AG, one of the companies leading the project, it is designed to create, manufacture and develop APVACs tailored for each patient based on the individual aspects of the patient's tumor and immune system. BioNTech AG and immatics biotechnologies GmbH, both German-based companies, will lead the project.
"This novel approach marks a fundamental paradigm shift in the therapeutic management of cancer patients, since the approach is suited to provide a truly individualized and targeted drug development at unprecedented speed," Ugur Sahin, chief executive officer of BioNTech AG and vice coordinator of the consortium, said in a statement. "In fact, currently, we are able to provide ready-to-administer personalized drugs within three months, whereas average time from target-to-hit to first in human testing is about 5.5 years."
The consortium is expected to address the high, unmet medical need in glioblastoma — an aggressive form of brain cancer with poor prognosis — where there are limited treatments available that have a minimal effect on survival.
For its participation, the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, as well as the other academic partners, will apply the APVACs to their patients in addition to contributing to the project with their own research.
The University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute is the only U.S. member of the consortium.
The first phase of clinical trials are expected to start in 2014 and will be led by the University of Heidelberg in Germany and the University of Geneva in Switzerland.