The Aragon Breast Milk Bank receives donations from 40 women
Augusts 3, 2022
From success to challenge: this is how the European approval of the first Spanish gene therapy against cancer was achieved
Augusts 3, 2022
It could represent "a break in the current paradigm in the treatment of this disease."
Researchers from the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) have demonstrated the preclinical efficacy of a new immunological drug based on an antibody that is capable of achieving regression of glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive brain tumor.
The research, led by the oncologist and co-director of the VHIO Preclinical and Translational Research Program, Joan Seoane, has achieved "extraordinary results" in a preclinical model of this type of tumor, so the new drug could represent "a rupture of the current paradigm in the treatment of this disease", VHIO remarked this Tuesday.
The journal 'Molecular Cancer Therapeutics' has just published the results of the preclinical study of this drug, carried out both with "in vitro" and "in vivo" models, using samples from glioblastoma patients.
"This study is especially important because it has been shown that an immunotherapy works in the treatment of glioblastoma. If we take into account that it is the most common and aggressive primary brain tumor, and that there is a great need to develop new treatments against this disease, I believe that the results of this preclinical study, which will now be validated in a clinical trial with patients, are very relevant," Seoane stressed.
Bispecific antibodies bind, on the one hand, to tumor cells and, on the other, to T cells so that the latter come into contact with the tumor and delete it.
For the development of these antibodies, it is necessary to have specific targets for tumor cells that make these antibodies bind only to tumor cells and do not cause the immune system to also end up attacking healthy cells.
The search for these targets is limiting the development of these strategies in solid tumors, since it is difficult to find targets that are expressed on the surface of tumor cells and are not shared by healthy cells.
"In the specific case of glioblastoma, there is a mutation of the EGFR gene, known as variant III, which is specific and specific to this type of tumor and is not shared by any healthy cell. This makes it an ideal target for the development of targeted therapies, although it is only present in 25% of glioblastomas," Seoane detailed.
The good results achieved in the preclinical validation phase of this drug have led to the launch of a phase I clinical trial that is already recruiting patients.
The research has been financed mainly by State Lotteries and Betting, through the Spanish Association Against Cancer, as well as the FERO Foundation and the Comprehensive Cancer Immunotherapy and Immunology Program (Caimi) of the BBVA Foundation at the VHIO.
Source: Heraldo de Aragón
