TPIM has developed a revolutionary vaccine that will affect all of us. Everyone knows someone has had cancer and sometimes the results can be devastating. What if you could identify cancer at an earlier stage? Treatment can be much more successful if applied at an early stage.
This is why I believe TPIM is going to be a huge hit and early investors could reap the profits if their vaccine hits the market.
Let me tell you how TPIM's system works.
TAP, or Transporters Associated with Antigen Processing, are proteins responsible for supplying tumor-associated antigens (markers) and viral antigens to the surface of infected cells. Without TAP, there are no cancer markers, so the immune system fails to spot the rogue cells and the cancerous cells can grow undetected.
In many cancers, the transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) is missing from, or is down-regulated, in the affected cell. Thus, the immune system is not able to distinguish between normal cells and cancerous cells, effectively hiding the cancer from the immune system.
These cancerous cells can progress into tumors that eventually cause mortality in humans affected with the disease. TPIM's vaccine technology is based on reintroducing TAP, thereby modulating the activity of the antigen processing machinery to increase effective presentation of antigens, or markers, to the immune system. The immune system can use this information to selectively destroy cancerous cells or those infected with pathogens."
"This is a tremendous milestone for the Company," said Denis Corin, CEO of TPIM. "The notice of allowance for this patent gives our Company a well protected platform from which to continue our development on a number of potential products in both the prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine markets and will allow us to approach potential partners with confidence."
TPIM plans to file an investigational new drug application with the FDA in the second half of 2009.
An article from Business week further explains how this gene therapy works.
When cells turn malignant, the immune system can often spot and kill them before they grow into tumors. But this sentinel system fails far too often. Geneticist and immunologist Wilfred A. Jefferies at the University of British Columbia wanted to know why.
Searching for genes that are turned on and off in cancer cells, he discovered that a crucial gene is silenced in more than half of tumors--and in virtually all metastatic cancers. Its role: making a protein, dubbed TAP, that performs a key step in moving characteristic markers called antigens to the surfaces of cells. Without TAP, there are no cancer markers, so the immune system fails to spot the rogue cells.
If he added an active version of the gene to tumor cells, Jefferies wondered, would the immune system then attack the cancer? His experiments in mice show that the answer is yes. When he used a modified virus to carry the TAP gene into mice with extensive small-cell lung tumors, 30% of the mice were cured. The rest showed no metastasis and lived twice as long as those without the gene.
It's very possible that TPIM could even be goggled up by a larger bio company before their drug ever comes out. The buyout price could be astronomical considering the market for global vaccines is forecasted to be $6 Billion by 2010!
Make sure you always do your own research and start by going to TPIM's website and reading up on the technology. Site: http://www.tapimmune.com
$0.41 (06/02/08)
