Vaxil’s ImMucin appears to have overcome a major

Vaxil’s ImMucin appears to have overcome a major drawback of using a vaccine to target a specific protein, namely that in many instances the vaccine has to be customized to the patient’s human leukocyte antigens (HLA), a system of genes unique to a person, which means a “silver bullet” solution for all is not possible.

“In the past, it was very difficult to induce immunity against tumor cells, with a very specific protein; we had to make a specific protein per type of HLA,” explained Vaxil’s Professor Michael Shapira.

ImMucin has been granted orphan drug status by both the US Food And Drug Administration and the European Medicine Agency, a status designed to encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop cures or treatments for rare diseases.

Vaxil founder Dr Lior Carmon said the recognition from the regulators served to both validate and enhance the company’s science.

ImMucin is a treatment that educates a cancer patient’s immune system to attack cancer cells via a specified domain, termed a signal peptide, of the MUC1 cancer antigen – an antigen being any substance that causes your immune system to produce antibodies. The MUC1 protein is often over-abundant in a diverse range of carcinomas – types of cancer that develop in the cells (epithelial cells) that line the surface of the body – and evidence of MUC1 is often an indication of several types of cancer, such as breast, lung, prostate and colon.

Patients in Vaxil’s trial were treated solely with the Immucin vaccine, as opposed to other cancer treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation, and all patients responded to the treatment, Professor Shapira told MCTV.

The professor confessed to being “astonished” that all patients developed specific immunity. Dr Carmon, meanwhile, drove home the significance of the test results, noting: “Importantly, in selected patients, a significant reduction in the percentage of plasma cells post [treatment] versus pre-treatment with ImMucin was observed.”