Cytheris SA, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on research and development of new therapies for immune modulation, published data that showed adjuvant interleukin-7 (IL-7) improves anti-tumour responses and survival in an animal model following a vaccine-induced immune response. The study was conducted by an international team of researchers at the Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada.

The paper entitled 'Adjuvant IL-7 antagonizes multiple cellular and molecular inhibitory networks to enhance immunotherapies' is published in Nature Medicine, (Marc Pellegrini, Thomas Calzascia, Alisha R Elford, Arda Shahinian, Amy E Lin, Dilan Dissanayake, Salim Dhanji, Linh T Nguyen, Matthew A Gronski, Michel Morre, Brigitte Assouline, Katharina Lahl, Tim Sparwasser, Pamela S Ohashi and Tak W Mak, 2009 May; 15(5) 528-36. Epub 2009 April 26).

"Studies such as the one described in this paper provide tantalizing evidence for the potential of immunotherapies to marshal the body's own defenses in treating cancer," said Michel Morre, DVM, president and CEO of Cytheris. "By augmenting and sustaining the vaccine-induced anti-tumour response described in this paper, IL-7 enhances tumour-specific immunity and harnesses the response to directly target spontaneously arising tumours. Most importantly, the resulting immune-mediated anti-tumour effect profoundly improves survival."

Investigational recombinant human Interleukin-7 (r-hIL-7) is a critical growth factor for immune T-cell recovery and enhancement.

Cytheris SA is a privately held clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on research and development of new therapies for immune modulation.