MabVax Approach

The adjuvant setting (after surgery and/or completion of chemotherapy) is the ideal time for immune intervention and in particular for administration of monoclonal antibodies or cancer vaccines aimed at instructing the immune system to identify and kill the few remaining circulating cancer cells. Passively administered or vaccine induced antibodies against selected cell surface antigens are ideally suited for eradication of free tumor cells and micrometastases. This is the role of antibodies against most infectious diseases, which has been accomplished against cancer cells in a variety of pre-clinical models and recent clinical trials. If antibodies of sufficient titer can be administered or induced against tumor antigens to eliminate tumor cells from the blood and lymphatic systems and to eradicate micrometastases, this would dramatically change the approach to treating the cancer patient. Establishment of new metastasis would no longer be possible, so aggressive local therapies including surgery or radiation therapy, and intralesional treatments, combined with our immunotherapeutic agents could result in long term control of metastatic cancers.