RE:AACR 2024 : Cancer vaccines get reintroduction with pathway " Presenting at AACR’s Sunday press conference, hepatopancreatobiliary surgeon Vinod Balachandran, M.D., said the T-cell challenge is fourfold: to identify optimal antigens that are both tumor specific and immunogenic and to find a modular delivery platform that can address a rapidly evolving population of clones in patients that are fit enough and to sustain high magnitude tumor-specific T cells.
The T cells have to be able to recognize the cancer without recognizing the normal cells, said Balachandran, who practices at Memorial Sloan Kettering's human oncology and pathogenesis program and is a member of the David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research.
“This is a challenge, because host T cells are programmed to not respond to host tissues. Quite specifically, they are programmed to respond to the organism, such as pathogens. So a vaccine against an infectious pathogen is much more easy, if you will, because the T-cells are already preprogrammed to recognize them, expand and last,” said Balachandran.
Previous attempts were also unsuccessful, because companies didn’t quite have all pieces of the vaccine technology solved, according to Kopetz. That includes the delivery mechanism, payload and more. They were typically really good at one aspect of the technology but missing others. "
It would appear that ONCY's pelareorep has been the only OV to have demonstrated to be able to address the above referenced fourfold T- cell challenge.