Melanoma vaccination results presented at conference.

2004 DEC 1 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Generex Biotechnology Corporation (NASDAQ:GNBT) announced the presentation by Nikoletta Kallinteris, the Antigen Express Project Leader, Ii-Key Hybrid Technology, who preformed these studies, at the Seventh International Anticancer Conference in Corfu, Greece. Antigen Express is a wholly owned subsidiary of Generex.

Nikoletta Kallinteris presented, "Ii-Key/Melanoma gp100(46-58) MHC class II epitope peptide vaccine primes CD4+ T-helper cells in HLA-DR4 transgenic mice." This presentation summarized work on a novel concept in melanoma vaccination by Antigen Express scientists during the past year in a specialized mouse model for melanoma vaccine. These transgenic mice contain the human HLA-DR molecules, which presented the vaccine peptides to the mouse T helper cells. This is an advanced preclinical model, offering support for an investigational new drug filing for clinical trials.

Cancer clinicians in many academic cancer centers have shown that peptide vaccines offer hope for immunotherapies in patients with established and potentially recurrent cancers. Melanoma is one of the most advanced models for identification and use of such peptide vaccines.

Many vaccine peptides have been developed for stimulation of patients' cytotoxic T lymphocytes to kill cancer cells. However, clinical trials with such vaccine peptides do not demonstrate particularly robust results. The reason for this lack of potency stems in part from the fact that those vaccine peptides do not boost T helper cells, which up-regulate the cytotoxic T lymphocytes and provide long-term immunological memory.

The mechanism used by Antigen Express scientists to stimulate T ...