A Taiwanese research team has developed a drug that shows promise for boosting immunotherapy in the treatment of malignant tumors, it said on Monday.
In animal trails, the drug helped boost immunotherapy efficacy by 30 to 40 percent in the treatment of tumors, said research team leader Alan Lee (李岳倫), of the National Institute of Cancer Research.
While the drug VEGF121-VEGF165 proved effective against tissue tumors in animal trails, it was not tested for use in the treatment of blood cancer, Lee told a news conference.
Safety tests of the drug would be carried out on animals before moving to clinical trials within the next five years, he said, adding that human trials would focus on patients with cancer of the breast, colon, neck and head.
Cancer cells tend to have an impenetrable shield, much like that of Marvel superhero Captain America, which wards off T cells, a type of white blood cell that protects the body against cancerous cells and other cells that have become infected by pathogens, such as bacteria or viruses, Lee said.
With VEGF121-VEGF165, the research team has developed a fusion protein drug that can breach the “Captain America” shield and enter the tumor’s microenvironment, thus enhancing immunotherapy to fight the cancer cells, he said.
VEGF is an abbreviation for vascular endothelial growth factor, a signaling protein that promotes the growth of new blood vessels.
National Health Research Institutes president Liang Kung-yee (梁賡義) said the drug’s key innovative concepts and research techniques have been patented in the EU, Japan and the US.
A paper on the team’s research was published in December last year in the Journal for Immuno Therapy of Cancer, the official journal of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer.
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