Assessment of immunologic response and recurrence patterns among patients with clinical recurrence after vaccination with a preventive HER2/neu peptide vaccine: from US Military Cancer Institute Clinical Trials Group Study I-01 and I-02

Abstract

The vaccinated patients who recurred had more aggressive disease compared to V-NR patients. V-R patients had no difference in immune response to the vaccine either in vitro or in vivo. V-R patients, when compared to C-R patients, trended towards more aggressive disease, decreased recurrence rates, decreased mortality, and no bone-only recurrences.

The Impact of HER2/neuExpression Level on Response to the E75 Vaccine: From U.S. Military Cancer Institute Clinical Trials Group Study I-01 and I-02

“…This protein is overexpressed in 25% of breast cancer, and these patients are candidates for trastuzumab immunotherapy. In a phase II clinical trial investigating the use of E75 as a preventive vaccine in high-risk breast cancer patients, our group has previously shown the vaccine to be safe, effective in eliciting an immune response, and clinically efficacious with decreased recurrence rates after a median follow-up of 20 months; however, this clinical benefit was lost because immunity waned without booster inoculations (23,31).…”

Cancer vaccines: should we be targeting patients with less aggressive disease?

“…Patients who had received the vaccine and had experienced disease recurrence were investigated and compared with vaccinated patients with no recurrence [84]. At the time of that analysis, there were eight vaccinated patients who had recurrence (VR), and 88 vaccinated patients who had no recurrence (VNR).…”

Progressive loss of anti-HER2 CD4+ T-helper type 1 response in breast tumorigenesis and the potential for immune restoration

“…11 Indeed, progress has been made in deciphering individual immune mediators of these antitumor effects. Although cytotoxic CD8 C T-lymphocytes (CTL) have historically been considered the primary effectors of antitumor immunity, 12 boosting CTL responses with peptide vaccines in HER2 pos -BC has yielded minimal clinical impact, 13 possibly because CTLs function suboptimally without adequate CD4 C T-cell help. 14 In addition to being critical for the generation and persistence of CTLs, CD4 C T-helper (Th) cells mediate antitumor effects through other mechanisms, including direct cytotoxic tumoricidal activity, modulation of antitumor cytokine responses, and potentiation of long-term immunologic memory.…”