CancerVax

CancerVax was an American pharmaceutical company founded in 1998 by Donald Morton. The company sought to develop a vaccine for cancer, and had candidates for melanoma reach phase III clinical trials. When those trials proved unsuccessful in 2005, the company soon underwent a reverse takeover with Micromet.

Company Background

CancerVax was founded in Delaware by Dr. Donald Morton in 1998. Prior to the formation of the company, Dr. Morton researched at the John Wayne Cancer Institute. After discovering what would eventually become CancerVax’s lead product candidate, Canvaxin, Donald left John Wayne Cancer Institute to start the company and push the drug through the clinical trials necessary in order to take a drug to the market. The company used specific mergers and joint ventures to attempt to humanize their antibodies and push their drugs through their pipeline.

Products

While the company eventually had several drugs in their pipeline focused on melanoma, colon cancer, lung cancer, solid tumors, and ophthalmic disease, their lead candidate Canvaxin was focused on melanoma. Canvaxin was a vaccine based treatment for melanoma, and was an immunotherapeutic. In the clinical trials it has been proven an effective treatment, with a significantly greater (P<0.0001) median survival rate over than no treatment. Immunotherapy in its most general form for cancer treatment uses the immune system to target tumor cells. While all cells produce cytokines and have receptor proteins on the cell surface, tumor cells may over-express them. Targeted immunotherapy towards these over expressed proteins could be an effective treatment towards different cancers. There are three types of immunotherapy, and they are briefly described below