BUSINESS WIRE--Breast cancer patients and their families might hold the important key to enabling new technologies that can help pinpoint the right treatment for the right patient at the right time. A new genomics project spearheaded by Santa Clara-based Iris BioTechnologies is looking for participants to offer information that will lead to more personalized medicine for the treatment of breast cancer and other deadly illnesses.

With widely different responses to the more than thirty chemotherapeutic agents in use today the ability to rapidly classify “generic” diseases like breast cancer into genetic subtypes is long overdue. In the past, oncologists have made treatment decisions based solely upon broadly defined disease knowledge and personal experience, with little or no insight into the molecular biology of cancer. Thanks to advances in technology the necessary clinical tools are rapidly becoming available.

One new tool is the Iris Breast Cancer Chip, which captures crucial molecular information concerning the activity of more than one hundred genes implicated in the disease from a breast biopsy sample. When processed, this information creates an optical pattern that is then analyzed by the company’s proprietary data program called “BioWindows,” which launched earlier this year.

“By combining the patient’s cancer gene profile with their environmental, hereditary and lifestyle information, doctors can pinpoint what drugs worked for patients with similar profiles,” explains Simon Chin, CEO of Iris. “The marriage of these two technologies is essential to assist doctors with practical prognosis, disease prevention, and the development of more fully targeted medicine.”

Iris expects to launch their first Nano-Biochip to identify gene expression patterns in breast cancer later this year. For now, breast cancer patients and their families are welcome to enter information into the database at www.biowindows.com.

“Looking at a mirror offers a sense of what you look like on the outside; with the Nano-Biochip and BioWindows technology you have a glimpse of the ‘inner you’ based upon heredity and factors that impact your genes,” says Mr. Chin. “We believe the future of treatment is in personalized medicine, and it all starts with your involvement.”

MORE RESEARCH:

BUSINESS WIRE--A breast cancer vaccine currently being tested in a Phase II trial has demonstrated to be safe and well tolerated in patients according to a paper to be published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The therapeutic breast cancer vaccine AE37 uses a peptide antigen (immune-stimulating fragment) of a cancer gene known as HER-2/neu. This gene/protein is present in many types of cells, but it is over-expressed in a high proportion of breast cancers as well as many others. The vaccine is being developed by Antigen Express, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Generex.

Dr. George Peoples of the Brooke Army Medical Center, who presented his findings at this year’s annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), found the vaccine to be safe and well-tolerated in women whose cancer has not spread to the lymph nodes in phase I study.

In order for therapeutic vaccines to be effective, they must educate the immune system to recognize the antigen present in the vaccine as harmful and to fight it off when it is encountered in the cancer.

The AE37 vaccine is based on one of two proprietary platform technologies established at Antigen Express. The technology helps the body fight cancer by modifying fragments of cancer-associated antigens to increase their potency in stimulating the immune system. The vaccine also leaves an imprint on the immune system to fight cancer should it ever reoccur.

Key to this vaccine breakthrough is the addition of a peptide molecule that acts as a facilitator to immune cells and stimulates the desired immune response.

“Think of the vaccine as a Trojan horse: to get the soldiers into the city you put them into a delivery system. Except the ‘horse’ in this case does not really go inside the T-cell,” explains Dr. Peoples. “The vaccine helps the antigen find a ‘receptor’ on the surface of the T-cell so that the immune system, once ignited, will seek out and destroy the cancer.”

“The completion of the first trial is a significant milestone,” commented Anna Gluskin, President and Chief Executive Officer of Generex. “While it may be a few years before we bring this to market, entering Phase II trials represents another step closer to the realization of a viable breast cancer vaccine in our lifetime.”