CEPI partner INOVIO launches Lassa vaccine Phase I trial in West Africa ghanavisions.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ghanavisions.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., Feb. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ INOVIO (NASDAQ:INO), a biotechnology company focused on bringing to market precisely designed DNA medicines to treat and protect people from infectious diseases and cancer, today announced the first participant was dosed in a Phase 1B clinical trial for INO-4500, its DNA vaccine candidate for Lassa fever, in Ghana. The Phase 1B clinical trial (LSV-002), ongoing at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research in Accra, Ghana, is the first vaccine clinical trial for Lassa fever to be conducted in West Africa, where the infection is endemic. INO-4500 is also the first vaccine candidate for Lassa fever to enter human trials.
Published: Feb 19, 2021 By Alex Keown
PICI – Bristol Myers Squibb veteran Ute Dugan was named Senior Vice President of Clinical Research at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI). She will oversee PICI’s clinical development, regulatory affairs and translational medicine efforts, with a focus on overcoming immunotherapy resistance and advancing novel breakthrough treatment combinations. At BMS, she was head of Worldwide Oncology External Medical Affairs, where she created research collaboration models to advance immune-oncology treatments together with partners in academia, professional societies and non-profit organizations. Dugan originally joined BMS as executive director of Global Clinical Research during the formation of the development teams for the pioneering I-O medicines ipilimumab and nivolumab. Before that, her career included stints at Roche/Genentech and Aventis.
Improving Cancer Immunotherapy by Blocking Glucose Supply
Source: Stocktrek Images/Getty Images
February 17, 2021
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All cells use sugar as a vital source of energy and building blocks. Unfortunately, that means even cancer cells use sugar. Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center wondered what happens when tumor cells and immune cells battle for the same sugar supply. Using mouse models and data from human patients, the researchers found a direct relationship between the amount of sugar that a tumor consumes and the effectiveness of immunotherapy. The more sugar the tumor consumed, the less effective the immunotherapy.
Nature and suggest that blocking cancer cells’ use of sugar could tip the scales in favor of immune cells, especially when they are activated by immunotherapy drugs.
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IMAGE: Taha Merghoub and Jedd Wolchok of the Ludwig Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and former postdoc Roberta Zappasodi view more
Credit: Ludwig Cancer Research
FEBRUARY 15, 2021, NEW YORK - A Ludwig Cancer Research study has identified a novel mechanism by which a type of cancer immunotherapy known as CTLA-4 blockade can disable suppressive immune cells to aid the destruction of certain tumors. The tumors in question are relatively less reliant on burning sugar through a biochemical process known as glycolysis.
Researchers led by Taha Merghoub and Jedd Wolchok of the Ludwig Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and former postdoc Roberta Zappasodi now at Weill Cornell Medicine have discovered that in a mouse model of glycolysis-deficient tumors, CTLA-4 blockade does much more than stimulate cancer-targeting T cells of the immune system. In such tumors, anti-CTLA-4 therapy also destabilizes and reprograms regulatory T