Medical news always grabs attention in the stock community, especially when it involves cancer. That’s why it’s no surprise that share prices for Northwest Biotherapeautics Inc. (OTCBB: NWBO) skyrocketed a whopping 135 percent by midday after the company announced that it had developed the world’s first commercially available brain cancer vaccine.According to a recent Northwest statement, the company’s DCVax-Brain platform technology has been approved for commercial use in Switzerland, making it the first commercially available therapeutic vaccine for brain cancer victims. The statement claims that both newly diagnosed and recurrent brain cancer patients treated with DCVax-Brain had “more than double” the survival time than patients who weren’t treated. Plus, the company claims that DCVax-Brain has none of the debilitating effects that come with chemotherapy.
“We are delighted to be the first company to reach the market with a personalized therapeutic vaccine for brain cancers, which carry a very bleak prognosis for patients today,” Dr. Alton Boynton, Northwest’s president and CEO, said in the statement. “We look forward to providing DCVax-Brain at leading medical centers and hospitals in Switzerland.”
Under the Swiss’ authorization of use, Northwest is permitted to manufacture DCVax-Brain in the U.S. and to make it available for treatment of patients with brain cancer at select centers in Switzerland. Boynton said that this was excellent news for the company, claiming the Swiss market is the best place to begin marketing products of this nature before moving to the global medical community.
“Switzerland is an attractive place to begin commercialization due to its highly respected regulatory oversight and its growing experience with cellular therapies,” Boynton said. “Switzerland is also increasingly noted for medical tourism and is easily accessible for many medical tourists. We look forward to being able to bring DCVax-Brain to patients in additional countries, and to applying our DCVax technology to many other cancers, including the five for which we already have FDA clearance to begin clinical trials.”
This is a great step forward for Northwest, which has built a reputation for developing autologous -medical situations where the donor and the recipient are the same person, like in skin grafts – immunotherapy products for cancer treatment. According to the company’s Web site, Northwest uses a patient’s own dendritic cells to treat cancerous cells by loading the dendrites with antigens and tumor proteins. By injecting these cells back into the patient, the cells initiate a potent immune response against the cancer cells, resulting in delayed time to progression and prolonged survival.
In response to the news, share prices leaped from an opening price of $2.30 a share to $4.95 a share by 1:00 p.m. CDT. Calls made to Northwest went unreturned.
