Inex reports progress with a therapeutic vaccine to treat cancer.(Inex Pharmaceuticals Corp. )(Brief Article)

2002 MAY 29 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Inex Pharmaceuticals Corp. (IEX) presented data to the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in San Francisco, California, that showed the company's OligoVax therapeutic vaccine can stimulate the immune system to inhibit the growth of melanoma tumors in preclinical studies.

Dr. Pieter Cullis, Inex's senior vice president, research said the result was achieved when an antigen associated with melanoma (called tyrosinase related protein-2 or TRP-2) was combined with Inex's OligoVax technology. The title of the poster presentation at AACR is "Characterization of a liposomal cancer vaccine delivery system containing immunostimulatory oligonucleotidesm."

"Having achieved proof-of-principle of OligoVax in the research laboratory, we are now ready to combine our technology with different antigens to develop therapies for specific kinds of cancer," Cullis said. "We believe OligoVax is a new and exciting approach to the development of therapeutic vaccines for the treatment of cancer and other diseases."

The OligoVax platform was derived from a series of preclinical studies that explored the therapeutic benefits of applying Inex's proprietary drug delivery technology to oligonucleotides (oligos). Oligos are short sequences of DNA, which can be designed to have immune activation properties.

OligoVax combines the necessary components ...