This Monday, September 11, the positive results of a French study on a therapeutic vaccine against lung cancer were made public.
New hope is emerging for patients with advanced lung cancer. This Monday, September 11, the French biotechnology company OSE Immunotherapeutics presented the positive results of its therapeutic vaccine Tedopi. They demonstrate a reduced risk of death compared to chemotherapy.
A total of 219 patients participated in this study in nine European countries and the United States. 139 subjects were administered Tedopi while the comparative group, made up of 80 people, was under chemotherapy. The vaccine was initially injected every three weeks, then every eight weeks for a year and finally every 12 weeks.
Published in the journal Annals of Oncology, the findings of the phase 3 trial indicate that “one year after the start of treatment, 44.1% of these patients were still alive in the group receiving the vaccine compared to only 27, 5% in the chemotherapy group.
The vaccine also causes “fewer side effects” and thus makes it possible to “maintain a better quality of life for patients”, according to Professor Benjamin Besse, director of clinical research at the Gustave-Roussy Institute and principal investigator of the test called Atalante-1.
The study disrupted by the pandemic
Cancer vaccines aim to educate the patient’s immune system to specifically recognize and destroy tumor cells. Tedopi is effective on patients with the HLA-A2 gene which, according to OSE Immunotherapeutics, is present in half of the population.
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, “the study did not complete its recruitment,” said Professor Besse. It therefore “does not have the desired power” but still made it possible to understand “which population has derived real benefit from the vaccine”.
The patients entering the randomized trial had in fact previously been treated with chemotherapy and immunotherapy. However, the results showed that Tedopi was most effective for those who initially responded to immunotherapy, before relapsing.