VIENNA, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE MKT: CVM), a late-stage oncology company, announced today that Daniel Zimmerman, Ph.D., its Senior Vice President of Research, Cellular Immunology, delivered a scientific presentation at the 12th Vaccines Research & Development: All Things Considered Conference in Boston, Massachusetts held on July 9-11, 2014.
The presentation entitled “The next generation of Rheumatoid Arthritis therapies: What has been learned from therapeutic vaccines for models of Rheumatoid Arthritis. Is IL-17 the real key to new therapies?” discussed the potential role CEL-SCI’s LEAPS vaccines might have on the future treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis. The presentation centered on the theory that using LEAPS vaccines to treat a complex disease like Rheumatoid Arthritis can be beneficial because CEL-SCI’s vaccine can be synthesized to stimulate the appropriate immune response to treat the disease based on its immunodominant cytokine phenotype, which can be predetermined before treatment. The ability to customize the LEAPS treatment in this way offers clear benefits, as compared to using one therapeutic approach such as disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) that are used today but are not universally applicable across all rheumatoid arthritis patients. The Company presented data which showed that LEAPS vaccines act at an earlier point in the progression of Rheumatoid Arthritis than any other therapy and with more specificity.
According to a survey conducted by Decision Resources, rheumatologists believe there is a high unmet need for Rheumatoid Arthritis therapies which induce remission in a greater percentage of Rheumatoid Arthritis patients than currently available agents. The world rheumatoid arthritis drug market will generate revenues of $38.5 billion in 2017, according to Visiongain.
The data presented included results from studies conducted at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois in the laboratories of Tibor Glant, MD, Ph.D., The Jorge O. Galante Professor of Orthopedic Surgery; Katalin Mickecz, MD, Ph.D. Professor of Orthopedic Surgery & Biochemistry; and Allison Finnegan, Ph.D. Professor of Medicine. The presentation also drew on work published from others in related autoimmune conditions conducted in animal models and human studies that tested various treatments that are approved or still under investigation. These data supported CEL-SCI’s theory that vaccine therapies are more disease specific and act upstream, which are considered advantages, compared to current therapies.
“We have now shown and believe that LEAPS therapies that are tailored to either Th1 or Th17 in Rheumatoid Arthritis models should produce better results than therapies currently on the market, and we expect these findings would be similar in other models and human diseases including multiple sclerosis, uveitis and other autoimmune conditions. We believe that this helps explain why other therapies that are for Th1 signature conditions may not work with Th17 based approach and vice versa. As opposed to current therapies available or in development, LEAPS vaccines target the immune response well before the production of the signature cytokines and not after the cytokines have been produced and released in the inflammatory processes of autoimmune diseases. In our effort to better understand the significance of a T-cell signature cytokine phenotype, our analysis of other related publications indicated that either a Th1 or Th17 cytokine profile in four different animal autoimmune models were specifically induced and discussed for only that particular disease model. However the meanings for therapeutic interventions or overall significance in light of each other were not recognized,” stated Dr. Zimmerman.
