How has the field of cancer immunotherapy in general advanced over the last view years?

Next week, we're hosting the TIDES 2014 Event.  Over the next few days, we'll be going back and looking at some of the one on one interviews we conducted with our speakers.  We'll start out by looking at the conversation we had with Eric Von Hofe, President of Antigen Express.

Today, Eric answers the question:
How has the field of cancer immunotherapy in general advanced over the last view years?

His answer:
It has had a really difficult time, up until the approval of Provans for prostate cancer and Yervoy for melanoma a couple of years ago.

For the first ten years of this century, there were lots of failures in the clinic and, simply, there were a lot of things that people needed to learn in the clinic in regards to how to use these compounds. So, while most therapeutic agents produce their effects relatively quickly, either they see tumors shrinking after hemotherapeutic agents given, which is good, or it doesn’t, which is bad. Even if therapeutic agents work differently --- and the problem there is that it can take up to eight months to a year to really get the patient’s immune system revved up and able to recognize the tumor. So, that’s really a big difference. Once people started taking that into consideration in the clinic, they started seeing many more encouraging results.

The upshot of all that is that most people now agree that probably within the next ten years, immunotherapy will constitute one of the mainstays of cancer therapy. So, it is an exciting time; people are very encouraged by it.

Read Dr. Von Hofe's full interview here.

Dr. Von Hofe will present the case study Peptide-Based Vaccines in the New Era of Cancer Immunotherapy on Tuesday, May 13.  For more information on his presentation and the rest of the program, download the agenda.  As a reader of this blog, when you register to join us May 12-15 in Providence, Rhode Island, you're eligible to save 20% off the standard rate!  Simply register to join us and mention priority code XB14180BLOG.  Have any questions?  Email Jennifer Pereira.

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