Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma - Other Treatments

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Vaccines. Lymphoma vaccines, which are still experimental, are therapeutic vaccines -- they are used to treat, not prevent, cancer. They are part of an immunotherapy approach called personalized medicine; each vaccine is individually tailored to the genetic composition of the patient’s tumor. The vaccine is usually given a few months after a patient receives chemotherapy.

Several different vaccines are showing promise in late-stage clinical trials. The MyVax vaccine uses a protein from the patient’s own tumor and combines it with a second protein that helps activate the immune system. It is currently being tested in a Phase III trial for follicular B-cell NHL. Another vaccine, BioVaxID, has also shown good results in clinical trials. In a Phase II trial for follicular B-cell NHL, the BioVaxID vaccine produced long-term clinical remission and an overall survival rate of more than 95 percent. In a Phase II trial for mantle cell lymphoma, the vaccine yielded an 89% survival rate. The vaccine is currently in Phase III trials for slow-growing follicular NHL.

Review Date: 01/17/2007
Reviewed By: Harvey Simon, MD, Editor-in-Chief, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital.