A phase I study of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) gene-transduced tumor vaccine for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) was initiated in 1998, as the first cancer gene therapy in Japan.
A phase I clinical trial with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor tumor cell vaccines in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) showed immune cell infiltration at vaccine sites and delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) responses to autologous tumor cells indicative of T-cell immunity.
Patients were treated in a randomized, double-blind dose-escalation study with equivalent doses of autologous, irradiated RCC vaccine cells with or without ex vivo human GM-CSF gene transfer.
We produced lethally irradiated retrovirally GM-CSF-transduced autologous renal tumor cell vaccines (GVAX) from six Japanese patients with stage IV renal cell cancer (RCC).