HS-P1
Current Status: Pre-clinical development
The HS-System is under development for the treatment of patients with advanced stage pancreatic cancer. Pre-clinical testing with a breakthrough cell-based product secreting HS-P1 is ongoing in a number of models of established pancreatic cancer. Due to the success of the first HS-System based product for the treatment of NSCLC, it is anticipated that a phase I clinical trial will be initiated in early 2011.
HS-P1 is an immune therapy that stimulates a patients immune system to recognize abnormal proteins that are expressed by pancreatic cancer cells but not normal cells. The cells that are stimulated by HS-P1 are known as cytotoxic T cells, and these cells are known to mediate regression and rejection of large tumors in both animals and humans.
About Pancreatic Cancer
The National Cancer Institute estimates that in 2009 over 40,000 people in the United States will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these patients will die of their disease within the first two years of diagnosis because effective treatments are not available. Despite decades of intensive research into new treatments for pancreatic cancer, little progress has been made. To date, most approaches that have been attempted to treat pancreatic cancer have focused on new surgical techniques, radiation therapy and chemotherapy. It is because of the failure of these approaches that new treatments with biological modifier therapies such as HeatShock must be tried.
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