Empowered Patient Podcast Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines with Nicolas Poirier OSE Immunotherapeutics
Nicolas Poirier, CEO of OSE Immunotherapeutics, uses immunology and molecular engineering to develop innovative immunotherapies for oncology, inflammation, autoimmune diseases, and organ transplant. The same immune cells, lymphocytes and macrophages, are involved in both immuno-oncology and immuno-inflammation, and OSE aims to re-educate these cells to recognize and eliminate cancer cells or restore immune tolerance in autoimmune diseases. He also discusses the potential of cancer vaccines in re-educating the immune system to target cancer cells, and the importance of combination therapies in improving treatment outcomes.
Nicolas explains, "There are two big families in the immune system. We have the adaptive immunity generated by lymphocytes. We have several types of lymphocytes: T-lymphocytes, B-lymphocytes, and so on. This is a very specific immune response that humans and other species have developed to recognize, very specifically some antigens from viruses, for tumors, and so on. We can control these cells."
"On the other side, there is innate immunity composed of macrophages, NK cells, or others, and this is a non-specific immune response that recognizes either danger signals or pathogen signals. These are mostly the elements that are implicated in many chronic inflammatory diseases. Still, there are also some elements that we can manipulate or re-educate in oncology to help the immune system globally work better. Because these lymphocytes and these macrophages, this adaptive immunity or innate immunity, work together, and all together, we can re-educate and orchestrate this immune response in a good direction."
"There's a big promise and big hope now in the field of therapeutic cancer vaccines. It's important to understand that it's therapeutic. It means we're not yet able to prevent cancer development, this might be in the future, but we use cancer vaccines to re-educate the immune system of patients that have developed a tumor. It's a therapeutic drug, and we're developing one of the most advanced therapeutic cancer vaccines in the world with the upcoming new registration phase three in lung cancer patients in second line."
#OSEImmunotherapeutics #Cancer #LungCancer #CancerVaccine #ImmuneSystem #Macrophages #Inflammation #InflammatoryDisease