At the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, the updated results on two previously released phase I trials of its APC8024 breast cancer vaccine involving a total of thirty women with advanced breast cancer were announced. Over 90% of these women had progressed on herceptin and chemotherapy. During the trial, women received no other anti-cancer therapy.

The most important bits:

"The median time to disease progression was 10 weeks (range 2-75 weeks), and 3 patients remain free of evidence of disease progression at 36 weeks (ongoing), 77 weeks and 94 weeks (both at time of study completion)."

"APC8024 was well tolerated in all patients who participated in the study, with no reported treatment-related Grade 3 or 4 adverse events. The most commonly reported Grade 1 and 2 adverse events were infusion-related mild and transient fever, fatigue and rigors."

"Based on the encouraging data from these two Phase 1 studies, we are planning to initiate a Phase 2 trial with APC8024 in metastatic breast cancer in the coming year."

Personally, I found it encouraging that in three women (10 percent) the disease did not progress for at least sixteen months after they had received the therapy.Dendreon's APC8024 Immunotherapy Shows Promise in Advanced Breast Cancer