Scientific Rationale

TVAX® is working to strengthen the natural ability of the human immune system to strategically attack and eradicate cancer.  On its own, the human immune system selectively and permanently eliminates foreign pathogens such as viruses without causing any permanent harm to the body. While the body's immune system has evolved to eliminate microbial threats invading from the environment, it does not recognize cancerous threats that arise from within our body. The challenge for scientists working in the field of immunology is to train the body's immune system to eliminate both the external and internal threats - and to turn that ability into a safe cancer treatment.

T cells have been scientifically proven to be the mediators of cancer immunity. Accordingly, treating cancer patients with high numbers of activated cancer specific killer T cells is a scientifically logical immunotherapeutic strategy.

The TVAX platform is dependent on two essential steps, each of which has been shown to be scientifically viable:

1. Vaccinate the patient with their own cancer cells combined with a powerful immunological adjuvant to generate an immune response against their own cancer.  Vaccination is a medical intervention that produces high numbers of partially activated cancer specific T cells in the patient’s blood.  Those cancer specific T cells can recognize cancer cells but cannot kill them.
2. Harvest cancer specific T cells generated by vaccination from the patient’s blood, use those cells to produce high numbers of activated "killer" T cells capable of killing cancer cells and then deliver those T cells back into the patient by IV infusion.

While both approaches are necessary, neither on its own is sufficient to generate a meaningful therapeutic benefit for the patient.

TVAX has developed and optimized processes for each of these steps and incorporated them into its proprietary immunotherapy platform.