French biotechnology company OSE Immunotherapeutics has announced promising results from a study of a therapeutic vaccine for the treatment of lung cancer. These results were published in the journal Annals of Oncology this Monday. The Tedopi vaccine developed by OSE Immunotherapeutics showed a significant reduction in the risk of death compared to chemotherapy in patients with advanced lung cancer.
The phase 3 clinical trial, pre-marketing, was conducted in collaboration with 219 patients from nine European countries and the United States. According to the researchers, one year after starting treatment, 44.1% of patients in the vaccine group were still alive, compared to only 27.5% in the chemotherapy group.
Additionally, the study found that using the vaccine rather than chemotherapy maintained a better quality of life for patients and resulted in fewer side effects. Professor Benjamin Besse, director of clinical research at the Institut Gustave-Roussy in Villejuif, highlighted these advantages. Treatment consists of administering the vaccine every three weeks, then at increasingly spaced intervals over time.
It is important to note, however, that the Tedopi vaccine is only effective in patients who have the HLA-A2 gene, which represents about half of the population. Therapeutic cancer vaccines aim to educate the immune system so that it can recognize and specifically target cancer cells.
Patients included in the randomized trial had previously undergone chemotherapy and immunotherapy. The study could not be completed due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning it did not reach the desired level of power. Nevertheless, it made it possible to determine which patients really benefited from the vaccine, namely those who had initially reacted favorably to immunotherapy before relapsing, as Benjamin Besse explained during the press conference.
 Sophie de Duiéry
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12/09/2023 | 
