CimaVax, Lung Cancer Vaccine, Coming To US For Trials

CimaVax, the lung cancer vaccine developed in Cuba, will be coming to the United States for further testing.

CimaVax, Lung Cancer Vaccine, Coming To The US For Study

Cuba has been researching CimaVax for 25-years, and the lung cancer vaccine has also been tested in Europe and Japan, but wasn’t available to test in the US until President Obama loosened the trade embargo with Cuba. Last month, New York’s Roswell Park Cancer Institute made a deal with a Cuban biotech company to test the vaccine in the States.

The vaccine, while not a cure for cancer, “helps the immune system create antibodies against a protein that causes cancerous cells to grow.” Dr. Kelvin Lee of the Department of Immunology at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute said that, essentially, “the tumor is being starved” by the vaccine.

Clinical trials have shown that the vaccine can help extend life for up to six months and is much less invasive and painful than chemotherapy – patients need only one shot of the vaccine a month.

Roswell CEO Candace Johnson said she hopes the US Food and Drug Administration will approve clinical trials within a year. Should trials be effective, CimaVax could be lead to the development of other vaccines that would help fight other cancers.

“We think it may be an effective way to prevent cancer from developing or recurring, so that’s where a lot of our team’s excitement comes in. There’s good reason to believe that this vaccine may be effective in both treating and preventing several types of cancer, including not only lung but breast, colorectal, head-and-neck, prostate and ovarian cancers, so the potential positive impact of this approach could be enormous,” Lee said.