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00:00 In recent days there have been a number of reports and studies about new treatments in the battle against cancer.
00:05 Well there's a new vaccine against the disease which is one of those breakthroughs that's been raising hopes.
00:10 It was developed by the French company Transgene which presented fresh data
00:13 at this year's American Society of Clinical Oncology which is happening in Chicago.
00:18 Well let's find out more now. We can cross to Strasbourg and speak to Dr. Alessandro Riva
00:23 who is the chairman and the CEO of Transgene.
00:26 Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us. I can only imagine how busy you must be.
00:31 Two vaccines have been developed by your company.
00:34 Before I ask you how they work, can I just ask you who they're aimed at?
00:39 Are they aimed at people at risk of getting cancer or people who've already got it?
00:43 So they are dedicated for people that already have cancer and the main objective is to delay the recurrence
00:52 after the surgery or radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
00:57 So these are vaccines that have been developed essentially so far for patients that have a high risk of recurrence
01:05 and we are showing that we are going towards the right direction in terms of reducing the relapse.
01:14 Okay for people who don't have a background in medicine and science,
01:17 perhaps you could tell us in as simple terms as you possibly can,
01:21 a little bit about how the vaccine works.
01:24 So the data that we have presented actually today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology
01:31 is about an important chapter of immune oncology that is called a personalised cancer vaccine.
01:38 So in a very simple words, what we are trying to do is to develop a vaccine
01:43 that is able to attack specific mutations in the tumour of the patients
01:50 that will allow actually to ultimately kill the tumour and avoid the relapse.
01:56 So the difficult part of this exercise is really the technology around how to identify the mutations
02:06 in the tumour of the patient that are specific to that tumour and to that patient.
02:12 And the second challenge of course is to have the right vector that will allow to carry
02:18 that mutation to the tumour and allow ultimately the immune system to develop an immune response against the tumour.
02:28 So it's rather complex but at the same time I would say simply it is about collecting the biopsy
02:36 from the patients of the tumour.
02:39 It's about identifying the mutations of that tumour throughout our technology
02:45 that is developed with a Japanese company, NEC, throughout the artificial intelligence
02:52 and then to put those mutations that we think being predictive for an immune response
03:01 into a carrier, for us it's a virus, and then inject that vaccine to the patient and observing the results.
03:10 So the data that we have presented today at ASCO are very encouraging because among 16 patients
03:18 that received our vaccine, no one has relapsed after more than a year of follow-up.
03:27 So this is kind of encouraging, still very early, but we are committed to follow up the patients
03:35 who will longer follow up and potentially also to open the development to other indications.
03:42 Amazing, there should have been no relapses.
03:45 And we've done lots of reports in the last 10 days or so about artificial intelligence
03:49 and the dangers that it poses.
03:51 But this is an example, as you say, of artificial intelligence actually potentially saving our lives.
03:55 I just want to ask you, does this vaccine work for all cancers
03:58 or is it specifically targeting certain types of cancer?
04:03 It has the potential to work in all cancers.
04:08 And of course, again, it is about the identification of the specific mutation of that specific cancer
04:15 in that specific patient.
04:17 But because of the algorithm that we are developing is rather sophisticated,
04:24 we continue to feed it up with new data.
04:27 We think that we can.
04:33 Oh, sounds like we've lost our guest there.
04:36 Sorry about that. Dr. Alessandro Riva appears to have frozen there mid-sentence,
04:40 but really interesting to speak to him.
04:42 And if you are able to hear us, thank you very much indeed for taking the time to talk to us
04:47 and congratulations on that study.