Therapeutic cancer vaccines advance

It is a bet on the long term, which begins to give reasons for hope: vaccines therapies to treat cancers are in full development and, among the pharmaceutical companies in the ranks, the Strasbourg-based Transgene believes in its chances. If the virus have bad press, at Transgene, on the contrary, they are cultivated with care. Because it is on them that the researchers of this company ofimmunotherapy to attack tumor cells.

Their strategy? Transform these viruses to produce tumor antigens, which will allow the immune system activate by producing the appropriate response in patients with cancer or at risk of recidivism. The viral vectors used by Transgene are of the vaccinia family, a virus close to the smallpox. A return to the origins in a way: it is by using this virus that the first vaccination was performed by British physician Edward Jenner against the smallpox, at the end of the XVIII^e century. ” We know very easily how to modify it, to produce it on a very large scale. », Explains Johann Foloppe, researcher at Transgene.

Everything therefore starts in the vast biotech laboratories, near Strasbourg, with the production of material base, the viral vector. ” We attenuate the virus, which will still be able to replicate, but we take away some functionality so that it replicates only in tumor cells », Indicates the scientist.

Educate the immune system

It is an engineering work that reflects the advances of the genetical therapy. It does not stop there: scientists will also arm this viral vector by providing it with additional functions to activate the virus. immune system in cancer cells.

Countless steps are then required to grow the vectors and verify their effectiveness. In the laboratory ofhistology, scientists thus observe the activation or not of theimmunity on tumor cells taken from patients. If all goes well, on their screens, the cancer cells, represented in blue, are gradually covered with red or purple dots, which represent lymphocytes cancer cells.

Therapeutic vaccines – which can use a variety of technologies, such as messenger RNA – are of increasing interest to the world of research and biotechs. “ They are based on the same principle: educating the immune system to spot anomalies to which he does not react », Explains Professor Christophe Le Tourneau, head of the clinical tests researchers from Institut Curie and principal investigator of a trial with Transgene.

And arm yourself with personalized vaccines thanks to AI

” A cell becomes tumor by modification of his DNA, these changes are supposed to be detected, but they are not: we must make the immune system understand, thanks to the vaccine, that they are dangerous », Adds the scientist. The sector is competitive: we find there in particular the American biotechs Moderna and german BioNTech, at the origin of the first anti-Covid-19 vaccines, also on projects of therapeutic vaccines. The American company Dendreon has already marketed a treatment against prostate cancer.

Transgene is working on several projects, including “TG4001”, in phase 2 of trials on humans in cancers caused by a papillomavirus (or HPV). It is then a question of educating the immune system so that it recognizes and destroys cancer cells expressing certain HPV antigens. Biotech is also developing “myvac”, personalized vaccines, especially in ovarian cancers. The drugs should again educate the patient’s immune system, but using mutations genetics specific to its tumor. For this she uses theartificial intelligence, which will determine which genetic mutations to integrate into the viral vector.

On Monday, Transgene published the first positive results for a phase 1 clinical trial, showing that the immune system of the first patients treated had been activated. ” Immune response does not mean clinical efficacy », Recalls, cautiously, Professor Le Tourneau. But the latter believes, however, that therapeutic vaccines could, in the long term, represent a revolution for patients.