Toni Chouieri, MD
Dana Farber Cancer Institute

The treatment of cancer with immunotherapy has shown great success over the past several years. This success is highlighted by the approval of ipilimumab, the first drug in decades to extend the survival rates in patients with metastatic melanoma.

If ipilimumab “releases the brake” that holds back the action of the immune system, then combining it with personalized vaccines increases the horsepower by “adding more cylinders.” The vaccines target neoantigens that only exist in the tumor cells and not in any healthy tissue. This combination is expected to generate a strong immune response with better survival outcomes.

Dr. Chouieri’s team produces personalized vaccines which they call NeoVax. Combining NeoVax with ipilimumab may achieve a powerful immune response with less side effects because the doctors can administer a lower effective chemotherapeutic dose. This study will focus on patients with advanced clear cell renal carcinoma after they have had surgery. [Awarded 2014]

 

Clinical Summary
Treatment of cancer with immunotherapeutic approaches has shown spectacular success over the past several years, highlighted by the approval of Ipilimumab, the first drug in decades proven to extend survival in patients with metastatic melanoma. Ipilimumab “releases the brake” that holds back the action of the immune system. Vaccines function by “adding more cylinders” to the immune system, increasing the horse- power. With the recent technical breakthroughs in genome sequencing, we can now find new vaccine targets – neoantigens – based on the mutations found in each patient’s tumor. Neoantigens are expected to generate a strong immune response and are unique to each person, thus truly representing personalized medicine. Dr. Chouieri’s team has put together the technologies and collaborators to find and produce these vaccines, which they call NeoVax. They predict that combining the stimulatory effects of vaccination with NeoVax and the release of immune suppression by Ipilimumab will produce a more powerful immune response against the cancer cells and significantly increase disease control and cure. These studies will be conducted in a form of kidney cancer that is growing in incidence and in need of new therapies.