Background

Immunicum is currently focusing on the development of therapeutic cancer vaccines, even though its core technology allows for the development of prophylactic and therapeutic treatments of both cancer and infectious diseases.  

Traditional cancer therapies, such as surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, are often insufficient in treating patients and usually cause severe side effects. Still, only about half of all cancer patients are cured from their disease. Immune therapy, which triggers the immune system to destroy harmful substances, has shown promise as an alternative effective treatment method with less negative side effects. The immune system recognizes and attacks that which is foreign to the body, but the problem with cancer is that tumor cells are not considered unknown invaders. This makes it difficult for the immune system to effectively neutralize tumor cells, which is why several methods have been developed, mainly with cellular vaccines, for enhancing the immunological response against cancer.

In cellular immunotherapy, patients are injected with cells that stimulate the immune system to destroy certain harmful substances. Immunicum develops vaccines that fall under the category of active cellular immunotherapies. Active meaning that they trigger the patients' own immune system to respond to harmful substances. Furthermore, the vaccines elicite a specific immune response, which means that the immune system targets specific cells rather than just boost the immune system in general.

Antigens

Antigens are a certain kind of molecules, which have the capacity to stimulate the immune system to elicit a specific immune response. Certain antigens are either uniquely expressed or simply more abundant on the surface of cancer cells than on the surface of normal cells. Immunicum takes advantage of this fact and develops vaccines that contain tumor-specific antigens. Once injected, the vaccines will stimulate the immune system to eliminate cancer cells without also attacking normal cells.

Dendritic cells

As antigen-presenting-cells (APCs), dendritic cells (DCs) are central in all immune responses. Their role is to process antigens and present them to T-cells. When T-cells have been activated by APCs they will be able to recognize and destroy cells that contain the specific antigens with which they were presented. DCs are the most potent and efficient APCs known, which is also why most cancer vaccines under development today are based on DCs.