Anticancer Therapeutic Vaccination Using Telomerase-derived Universal Cancer Peptides in Glioblastoma
Status:
Recruiting
Trial end date:
2023-07-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most frequent primary brain tumor and the brain tumor with the
poorest prognosis. The current treatment relies on surgical resection of gross tumor followed
by radiochemotherapy and adjuvant therapy with temozolomide.
After such therapy, most patients experiment recurrence and few therapeutic option are
available. Despite such therapies, median survival only reaches around fifteen months.
There is a strong rational to develop telomerase vaccine in GBM. Telomerase (TERT) is a major
oncogene, particularly in primary brain tumors 24. Alterations in TERT are very frequent in
central nervous system tumors, seen most commonly in gliomas25. Mutations in the TERT
promoter are found in approximately 80% of primary glioblastoma (GBM). These findings
strongly support the rational to develop vaccine targeting telomerase in GBM.
The aim of this project is to evaluate UCPVax treatment in glioblastoma. UCPVax is a
therapeutic anti-cancer vaccine based on the telomerase-derived helper peptides designed to
induce strong TH1 CD4 T cell responses in cancer patients (NCT02818426).