A Cuban vaccine against lung cancer will be tested in the United States, after getting permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the local media announced.
In clinical trials, the Cuban vaccine CIMavax will be applied to a group of patients from Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, during a period of three years. The Institute will receive the vaccine against non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which has been available in Cuba since 2011.
The trial will test CIMavax in combination with an immunotherapy drug called Opdivo, which has already been approved in the United States, in order to check whether the combination of both improves the effectiveness of treatment.
This is the first drug developed in Cuba that is authorized by the FDA to be tried in US health institutions.
On 14 October, the Obama administration submitted a fifth package of measures to modify the blockade imposed on the island for over half a century. The package included conducting joint research to register, produce, and market Cuban biopharmaceuticals in the United States.
However, the measures do not allow the establishment of joint ventures for such products, and neither importing those products from the US territory, unless specific licenses are issued for that purpose, such as did.
Roswell Park approached the Molecular Immunology Center (CIM, Centro de Inmunología Molecular) for the first time in April last year, during a trade mission of New York entrepreneurs to Cuba, a few months before the official restoration of relations between the two countries.
The vaccine
The Cuban vaccine has been used to treat about 4,000 patients worldwide. Besides Cuba, where the vaccine has been included in the Primary Health Care system, its use has been approved in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru.
According to CIM experts, the vaccine developed for over 25 years stimulates the immune system to attack the proteins that produce tumors in the lung and thus prevent spread to other parts of the body.
Source: Agencia ID
