ImMucin: Targeting and Destroying Cancer Cells

Israel, in the past recent years, has been making incredible progress in targeting one of the world's deadliest diseases, cancer. One of these innovations has been produced by an Israeli company, Vaxil BioTherapeutics. Vaxil is developing ImMucin, a therapeutic vaccine for the treatment of cancer, composed of a distinct 21 amino acid peptide. It essentially stimulates the patient’s immune system to identify and destroy cells on which the cancer marker MUC1 appears. As it is usually visible only on cancer cells and not on healthy cells, the concept behind the drug is that the immune system will target and kill the cancer cells but leave healthy cells unharmed.

The ImMucin vaccine possesses several defining characteristics. First, approximately 90% of all cancers are thought to have this particular marker, thus providing ImMucin the capacity for enormous potential. Second, the specific sequence is only found on the cancer cells and not in soluble form in the blood, (thereby increasing the strength of the immunological response). Furthermore, ImMucin can activate a combined initiation of multiple subcategories of immune cells. Also, ImMucin can be provided to a very wide section of the population with no need for complex and expensive personalization or prior selection based on the patient's immune system. In addition to this, ImMucin has a unique property that may allow it to control the inclination of the tumor to elude the immune response (TAP deficiency) and develop resistance to treatment.

In 2013, ImMucin successfully completed a Phase I/II study in patients with Multiple Myeloma at the Hadassah Medical Center, Jerusalem and Rambam Medical center, Haifa, Israel, meeting all the study's stages and requirements. Vaxil is preparing a Phase II study in Myeloma and another study in  solid tumors (e.g. breast or lung cancer).

Below are some links in which the idea behind the vaccine have been featured:

1. http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2013/06/20/israeli-cancer-vaccine-immucin-shows-optimistic-results/

2. http://www.vaxilbio.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18&Itemid=27

3. http://globenewswire.com/news-release/2013/04/09/536849/10027839/en/Vaxil-Reports-Positive-Results-From-a-Phase-I-II-Clinical-Trial-Using-Its-Therapeutic-Cancer-Vaccine-ImMucin-In-Patients-With-Multiple-Myeloma.html

4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21570434

5. http://www.myeloma.org.uk/about-muk/news/myeloma-news/immucin-a-potential-vaccine-for-myeloma/

The ImMucin Vaccine
http://www.myeloma.org.uk/files/4013/3536/1218/vaccine1.jpg