Getting to the Roots of Cancer

The discovery of cancer stem cells (CSCs) in the late 1990s began a revolution in the cancer treatment paradigm. This revolution prompted groundbreaking research that gave rise to a new generation of cancer therapeutics designed to target what is widely believed to be the root cause of cancer.

The "evil cousin" of regular stem cells, CSCs are believed to generate tumors much in the same way that their relatives generate healthy tissue. Though CSCs appear to constitute a small portion of the overall tumor mass, their resistance to radiation and chemotherapy and ability to migrate from the original tumor site increase the chance of tumor recurrence. New treatments that effectively target and destroy these CSCs are therefore critical to ensuring long-term cancer-free survival.

ImmunoCellular Therapeutics is focused on developing products that harness the native immune system to attack CSCs without harming healthy tissue. Our lead products, ICT-107 and ICT-121, are designed to accomplish this goal through two different strategies:

ICT-107 is an autologous, or personalized, dendritic cell-based vaccine that works by activating a patient’s immune system against specific tumor-associated antigens. This is accomplished by extracting dendritic cells from a patient, loading them with the antigens, and reintroducing them to the patient’s body to trigger an immune response.

ICT-121 is an off-the-shelf, peptide-based vaccine that works by stimulating an immune response to CD-133, a protein that is over-expressed by many CSCs, but not by healthy cells.