Abstract
Current therapies for most types of cancer focus on either surgical or radiotherapeutic eradication of the primary tumor as the best opportunity for cure. Therapy of disseminated disease has focused on chemotherapy, but, with the exception of certain rarer types of tumors, few patients are cured by chemotherapy, and even improvements in survival have been difficult to demonstrate. TRANSGENE's current approaches to oncology focus on the stimulation of the body's own immune system to induce rejection of tumors. One of these approaches is antigen-specific therapy. The first product candidate for antigen-specific therapy expresses the tumor-associated MUC1 antigen, stimulating a cellular immune response that may be useful in treating breast cancer and various epithelial cancers, such as lung, pancreatic and ovarian cancers. The product developed is a recombinant vaccinia virus containing sequences that code for human MUC-1 antigen and interleukin-2. A phase I trial in nine women with breast cancer was performed, in which the potential product was well tolerated without serious side effects, and MUC1-specific immune responses were observed. PhaseII trials in breast and in prostate cancer began during the second quarter of 1998. A phaseI trial in lung cancer patients is also in progress. During the same period, a second-generation product was developed. The new construct has been put into a highly attenuated vaccinia virus (modified virus Ankara), the safety of which was tested in a clinical trial in MUC1-positive cancer patients. Based on these results, phase II studies are in preparation to assess the clinical efficacy of this product in different populations of patients whose tumors express the MUC-1 tumor antigen.
Highlights
Lymph node biopsy is important as a prognostic factor, and influences therapy
In this study we determined the in vivo cell kinetics along the spectrum of apparently normal epithelium, hyperplasia, preinvasive lesions and invasive carcinoma, in breast tissues affected by fibrocystic changes in which preinvasive and/or invasive lesions developed, as a model of breast carcinogenesis
This study was undertaken to determine the effect of wound healing drainages and postsurgical sera obtained from breast carcinoma (BC) patients on proliferation of dormant BC cells and to assess the role of HER2 oncoprotein in this proliferation
Summary
Lymph node biopsy is important as a prognostic factor, and influences therapy. In the transition from normal epithelium to hyperplasia and from preinvasive lesions to invasive carcinoma, the net growth of epithelial cells results from a growth imbalance in favour of proliferation. The objective of this study was to assess the efficacy of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in symptomatic patients after breast cancer treatment. Conclusion: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy should be considered as a treatment option for patients with persisting symptomatology following breast-conserving therapy. We hypothesized that COX-2 expression was associated with that of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) in human breast cancer. Conclusion: COX-2 expression is significantly associated with increased cellular proliferation and angiogenesis in invasive breast cancer. Recent studies have demonstrated that the sentinel node biopsy (SNB) is a reliable and minimally invasive method for determining the axillary node status in patients with breast cancer. Conclusion: Overexpression of episialin strongly inhibits fat secretion, and critically affects timing of involution of the lactating mammary gland
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