Vaccine, drug combo promising against HPV-related cancers
Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Combining a tumor-specific vaccine with an immune checkpoint inhibitor shrank tumors in one third of patients with incurable cancer related to HPV, according to a phase II clinical trial. Participants were injected with the vaccine ISA101, which targets important peptides from a cancer-promoting HPV16 genotype of human papillomavirus, and nivolumab, a drug that blocks activation of PD-1 on T cells. The findings were published Thursday in the Journal of the Medical Association Oncology. "That encouraging response rate is about twice the rate produced by PD1 checkpoint inhibitors in previous clinical trials, so these results will lead to larger, randomized clinical trials of this combination," principal investigator Dr. Bonnie Glisson, a professor of thoracic/head and neck...