Cancer & HIV Vaccine Researchers to Meet to Share Data, Lessons Learned

Newswise — Cancer and HIV vaccine researchers from around the world will gather for a three-day conference in New York City October 4-6, 2007, along with representatives from industry and health research funding organizations to share and discuss data from the latest clinical and laboratory studies aimed at developing preventive and therapeutic vaccines for both diseases. This is the first international conference on HIV and cancer vaccination to follow the announcement last month from Merck that it had terminated a landmark trial of its HIV vaccine because it failed to prevent infection by the virus. The conference, called "Cancer & HIV Vaccines: Shared Lessons," is the only forum specifically intended to bring cancer and HIV vaccine researchers together to share data and discuss strategies to move both fields forward.

The conference is sponsored by the U.S.-based Cancer Research Institute (CRI), which is committed to advancing immunology to conquer cancer, in conjunction with the Academy of Cancer Immunology. Meeting co-chair and noted cancer immunologist Lloyd J. Old, M.D., chairman of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and director of CRI's Scientific Advisory Council, will open the three-day meeting along with HIV vaccine expert Giuseppe Pantaleo, M.D., chief, Division of Immunology and Allergy at the University of Lausanne. They will describe progress to date in the two fields of vaccine research and how the two fields can learn valuable lessons from one another.

Speakers include representatives from the National Institutes of Health, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, New York University School of Medicine, and others. Vincent Brichard, M.D., Ph.D., vice president, Cancer Immunotherapeutics, Clinical R&D at GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals (GSK) will present final results of GSK's phase II study of a MAGE-A3 therapeutic lung cancer vaccine, which recently entered phase III evaluation in the largest clinical trial ever of a lung cancer therapy. Twenty-three plenary lectures will be presented during the symposium and two poster sessions will also be featured. Speakers will address topics including: vaccination strategies, vectors, Toll-like receptor ligands, therapeutic HPV vaccines, effects of chronic viral infection on the immune system, seromics, and immune checkpoint blockade.

Among the shared lessons to be discussed at the meeting: HIV vaccinologists have developed a number of highly sensitive immunological assays and have made great strides in the use of DNA and recombinant viral vectors to deliver antigen as a vaccination strategy. This knowledge can be of significant use to cancer vaccine researchers, who are currently testing vaccines that use viral vectors derived from fowlpox and vaccinia viruses to present cancer antigens to the immune system and have also developed sensitive immunological assays to monitor the immune system's cancer-specific antibody, CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell response to vaccination.

HIV vaccine research lacks small animal models for laboratory studies. Currently, subhuman primates are the only animal models available for HIV studies, the cost of which is very prohibitive and involves the use of a virus that, though similar to human immunodeficiency virus, is not identical. Taken together, these are rate-limiting hurdles that significantly delay progress in HIV vaccine research.

Cancer vaccine researchers, on the other hand, have developed a number of excellent small-animal models and have as a result been able to show definitively in those models that tumors can be eliminated by the immune system following vaccination. Furthermore, cancer vaccine researchers have dissected the cellular and humoral components of the immune system's response to vaccination. The major challenge in both the cancer and HIV fields is to correlate these vaccine-induced immune responses with protective responses.

New approaches to control factors that suppress immunity will also receive special attention. Three talks will address the impact of the antibody anti-CTLA-4 in the therapy of cancer. James P. Allison, Ph.D., who developed the antibody now being produced by Bristol-Myers Squibb, will speak. Also known as MDX-010 or Ipilimumab, anti-CTLA-4 antibody has the effect of removing the brakes on the immune system's response to cancer antigens and may also have great value in vaccination against HIV.

Recently established collaborative efforts to accelerate research have benefited both fields and will be discussed during the meeting. In cancer, the CRI/LICR Cancer Vaccine Collaborative, launched in 2001, is a global network of academic clinical trial sites, immune monitoring laboratories, and reagent production facilities that work together on single-variable, standardized early-phase cancer vaccine trials targeting the prototypic human cancer antigen, NY-ESO-1. In HIV, the Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery, founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2006, has greatly added to the coordinated international effort to develop HIV vaccines.

Cancer & HIV Vaccines: Shared LessonsOctober 4-6, 2007Manhattan Conference Center at the Millennium Broadway Hotel145 West 44th Street, NY, NY

A complete agenda and list of speakers for the meeting may be found on the Cancer Research Institute website, http://www.cancerresearch.org/symposium2007/index.html. Credentialed members of the press are strongly encouraged to attend this timely conference.

About the Cancer Research InstituteThe Cancer Research Institute (CRI) is the world's only non-profit, private organization dedicated exclusively to the support and coordination of scientific and clinical efforts that will lead to the immunological treatment, control, and prevention of cancer. Guided by a world-renowned Scientific Advisory Council that includes five Nobel Prize winners and twenty-eight members of the National Academy of Sciences, CRI supports the finest cutting-edge cancer research at top medical centers and universities throughout the world. As the initiator and steward of unprecedented global laboratory and clinical programs like the Cancer Vaccine Collaborative, a partnership with the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, and the Coordinated Cancer Initiatives, the Cancer Research Institute is ushering in a new era of scientific progress, hastening the discovery of effective cancer vaccines and other immune-based therapies that are providing new hope to cancer patients. The Cancer Research Institute has one of the lowest overhead expense ratios among non-profit organizations, with the majority of its resources going directly to the support of its science, medical, and research programs. This has consistently earned CRI an A grade or higher for fiscal disclosure and efficiency from the American Institute of Philanthropy and top marks from other charity watchdog organizations. http://www.cancerresearch.org.