Bernard A. Fox, Co- founder, President, and CEO of UbiVac, shared Patrick Hwu’s, President and CEO at Moffitt Cancer Center, post on LinkedIn:
“Great to be back in Berlin and headed to TIMO 2026 – the 20th annual meeting of ‘Tumor Immunology meets Oncology (TIMO).‘
Investigators from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the USA are gathering to discuss the latest developments in the field. I will be talking about cancer’s Dark Matter – much of which is derived from so-called ‘junk’ DNA. It is increasingly clear that a large amount of cancer’s dark matter may be promoting or even driving cancer development.
Our group in Portland has pioneered the first Dark Matter cancer vaccine and has taken a different strategy than other companies in this space. We discuss this in a review in last month’s Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer.
Our strategy builds on more than 30 years of preclinical and clinical studies with autologous and allogeneic cancer vaccines, including the earliest gene-modified tumor vaccines. It builds on the work of Liz Jaffee, Drew Pardoll, Hy Levitsky, Glenn Dranoff, Kristen Hege, Steve Sherwin, and many others.
With help from clinical colleagues Walter Urba, Brendan Curti, Rachel Sanborn, David Page, Rom Leidner, R. Bryan Bell, Carlo Bifulco, it evolved – today we know our cancer vaccine, DPV001, contains more than 400 dark genome-derived antigens and has induced T cell responses to dark antigens in a patient. In a phase Ib combination immunotherapy trial, it has tripled response rate, complete response rate, and progression-free survival, and more than doubled overall survival.
This platform is off-the-shelf, reproducibly manufactured as a GMP drug, designed for treatment of adenocarcinomas and squamous cell cancers, with a favorable safety profile, and has already been used in patients with TNBC, prostate cancer, NSCLC, and HNSCC.”
Title: Bright side of the dark genome: antigens for next-gen cancer vaccines
Authors: Xiao-Song Wang, Bernard A. Fox
Read The Full Article
Other articles about NSCLC on OncoDaily.