Cancer Decisions® - Remarkable Results With New Castle Vaccine

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Remarkable Results With New Castle Vaccine

Sunday, 09 May 2010

One experimental cancer treatment that has not received the attention it

deserves is Newcastle Disease virus vaccine. In the United States, this

treatment, associated with the name of Laszlo Csatary, MD, has long been

neglected (Csatary 2004, Wagner 2006). In Germany, the work of Prof.

Volker Schirrmacher of the Division of Cellular Immunology, German

Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, and Prof. M. Schlag of the

Humboldt University, Berlin, is better known.

There are many technical discussions on how NDV vaccines should best be

produced. In Schirrmacher's laboratory, however, a low-pathogenic Ulster

strain of NDV is allowed to infect cancer cells. The result is a potent

up-regulation of certain molecules on the surfaces of the tumor cells.

NDV infection of tumor cells also leads to increased T cell activity.

Schirrmacher has published at least 61 articles on NDV, including a

promising 1992 phase II trial (Schlag 1992).

However the first randomized prospective clinical trial (RCT) appeared

last year. This presents the use of active specific immunization, or

ASI-NDV, in colorectal cancer patients after liver resection. There were

51 patients treated, divided into a group that received the vaccine vs.

a control group. Eighteen (72%) of the patients completed a series of at

least six vaccinations.

The primary end-point of the trial was overall survival, and the

secondary endpoints were disease-free survival and metastases-free

survival. The follow-up period was 116.1 months in the treatment group

vs. 112.4 in the control group.

Ostensibly, the treatment was a failure because it did not have a

statistically significant effect on survival in the overall patient

group. However, what led the authors of the study to call the results

" remarkable " was that there was a big difference in the response of the

colon vs. the rectal cases.

Rectal cancer patients did not respond to the vaccine. But there was a

3.3 times greater chance of surviving colon cancer if you were

vaccinated than if you were not. There was also a 2.7 times greater

chance of being metastasis-free. Thus, while 9 colon cancer patients

(78.6 percent) from the control group died, the number who died in the

vaccinated group was just 4 (30.8 percent), or less than half. " In colon

cancer patients, " the authors wrote, the Newcastle treatment " appears to

be beneficial prolonging overall and metastases-free survival. " They

have called for " further clinical research validating the promising

results in larger group of colon cancer patients " (Schulze 2009).

Admittedly, the number of patients in the study was rather small. Since

the authors did not anticipate any major difference between the

responses of rectal and colon cancer patients, they did not specify this

distinction in their original study design. This led to the use of a

subgroup analysis, which some statisticians regard as

less-than-convincing. Nonetheless, the results are provocative and

definitely warrant further study. One only hopes that it will not take

an additional 15 or 20 years to make that happen.

--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

Resources:

Csatary LK, Gosztonyi G, Szeberenyi J, et al. MTH-68/H oncolytic viral

treatment in human high-grade gliomas. J. Neurooncol.

2004;67(1-2):83-93.

Schlag P, Manasterski M, Gerneth T, Hohenberger P, Dueck M, Herfarth C,

Liebrich W, Schirrmacher V.

Active specific immunotherapy with Newcastle-disease-virus-modified

autologous tumor cells following resection of liver metastases in

colorectal cancer. First evaluation of clinical response of a phase

II-trial. Cancer Immunol Immunother. 1992;35:325-330.

Schulze T, Kemmner W, Weitz J, et al.

Efficiency of adjuvant active specific immunization with Newcastle

disease virus modified tumor cells in colorectal cancer patients

following resection of liver metastases: results of a prospective

randomized trial. Cancer Immunol. Immunother. 2009;58(1):61-69.

Wagner S, Csatary CM, Gosztonyi G, et al. Combined treatment of

pediatric high-grade glioma with the oncolytic viral strain MTH-68/H and

oral valproic acid. APMIS. 2006;114(10):731-743.