Targovax AS
Testing a peptide vaccine against pancreatic cancer
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
Dendreon’s prostate-cancer treatment Provenge demonstrated that the concept of rallying the body’s immune system to fight cancer actually can work. Norwegian start-up Targovax AS is one of many companies working to commercialize peptide vaccines intended to rouse the immune system and train it to recognize cancer. Its pancreatic cancer treatment is injected into the skin, so that peptides can be taken up by dendritic cells, which then carry the peptides off to the lymph nodes and present them to T cells, which then enter the body’s circulation with a potential to kill, or stimulate the killing of, cancer cells.