Cell-based Gene Therapy against Cancer

 

With its cell-based gene therapy against cancer, MOLOGEN is pursuing an innovative approach to the treatment of cancer diseases that combines complex platform technologies in a single product. Here, foreign cancer cells (allogeneic tumor cells) are used to activate the patient’s immune system in order to recognize and fight the tumor cells produced in the body. To increase the efficiency of the immune system’s defenses, the allogeneic tumor cells are gene-modified prior to treatment using MIDGE vectors. As a result of this modification, such allogeneic tumor cells are especially well recognized by the patient’s immune system. In addition, dSLIM immunomodulators are employed, which trigger a broad activation of the immune system.

 

The activation of the immune system in this way represents a highly promising approach for overcoming the fatal tolerance of the patient’s immune system to the cancer cells. Frequently, a cancer patient’s immune system fails to recognize degenerate cancer cells as foreign and malignant. This situation allows the cancer cells to grow unhindered. Approaches that only target a specific characteristic of a type of tumor (i.e. a tumor-associated antigen or TAA) can often provide only short-term success. Tumor cells frequently manage to undergo minor modifications, thus adapting to external measures. The result is a renewed proliferation of the cancer cells and the ineffectiveness of the therapeutic approach. By contrast, use of gene-modified allogeneic tumor cells allows a very wide-reaching therapeutic mechanism to be pursued. The allogeneic tumor cells possess a large number of tumor-associated antigens, which also exist on the patient's own cancer cells. The immune system is thus able to attack the tumor in a number of ways, and it should therefore be significantly more difficult or even impossible for the cancer cells to “escape”.

 

Safe and effective approach

The combination of gene-modified cells with the immunomodulator dSLIM activates the patient’s immune system very effectively. On the one hand, a specific immune response to the tumor-specific antigens present on the gene-modified tumor cells is triggered while, on the other, a non-specific immune response is initiated that predominantly activates what are known as natural killer cells (NK cells). The NK cells activated in this way can then fight the tumor cells effectively ( mechanism of action).

 

Preclinical experiments have successfully demonstrated a good efficacy of the therapeutic. In mouse models, treatment with the therapeutic has significantly increased the survival rates of the animals. Up to now, individual treatments of cancer patients (primary metastastic renal cell cancer, metastastic colorectal cancer, metastastic breast cancer) also show that patients respond well to the therapy. No adverse effects have been observed. This has also been confirmed in toxicological studies in animals.

 

All inquiries for further information about Cell-based Gene Therapy against Cancer in India should please be addressed to Onco Life Sciences.   info@onco.in

 

MOLOGEN®, MIDGE® and dSLIM® are registered trademarks of MOLOGEN AG