The first abstract with the title “Induction of multiple tumor specific T-cells in long-term surviving AML patients after treatment with a whole tumor cell vaccine” was presented during the poster session on May 12. Mendus had reported that at the latest data cut of the ADVANCE II Phase 2 trial, the majority of patients treated with Mendus’ lead product vididencel were alive at a median follow-up of 41.8 months. Long-term survival was associated with broad immune responses. The research presented at CIMT by Mendus and academic collaborators from Amsterdam UMC and Haukeland University Hospital Bergen focused on a detailed analysis of the T cell responses in long-term surviving patients of the ADVANCE II trial, including the detection of individual T cell receptors against tumor-associated antigens. Individual T cell receptors against WT-1 and other tumor antigens were detected and dynamics were followed over time during vididencel treatment. The study confirms the stimulation of broad tumor-specific immune responses following vididencel treatment, which contribute to the long-term immune control over residual disease in AML.

A second abstract with the title “Robust ex vivo expansion of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes from gynaecological cancer biopsies using dendritic cells derived from the leukemic cell line DCOne" was presented during a poster session on May 13.

The data presented by Mendus and academic collaborators at the University Medical Center Groningen indicate that Mendus’ DCOne platform can be applied to optimize the production of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) for therapeutic purposes in gynaecological cancers. The therapeutic use of TILs has been demonstrated in a range of solid tumors, but their production process requires improvements to ensure reliability and reproducibility. Mendus’ DCOne platform provides off-the-shelf cells with a mature dendritic cell phenotype and these DCOne mDCs were shown to improve the expansion of TILs from ovarian and endometrial cancer tissue samples, supporting the development of improved production methods using the DCOne platform in these indications and potentially other solid tumors.