Effectivity of Long Antigen Exposition Dendritic Cell Therapy (LANEX-DC®) in the Palliative Treatment of Pancreatic Cancer

Purpose: In pancreatic cancer median survival times range around 6, 6 to 6,9 months. Here we retrospectively analyzed the outcome of immunotherapy in the additional palliative treatment of pancreatic cancer with long antigen exposition dendritic cell therapy (LANEX-DC (R)) in 138 patients who were treated at our institution. Patients: Data were available of 134 patients (97.1%). The median interval between first diagnosis and start of treatment was 1.4 months. Results: Therapy was well tolerated and no serious side effects were observed. The survival rate after 6 months was 72.2% and afters 9 month 50.4%. The median survival time according to Kaplan- Meier regression analysis was 8.9 months. Median survival was significantly higher in the group of patients who started immunotherapy within 2 months following diagnosis (p=0.029) or repeated immunotherapy (p=0.027). Interestingly, younger patients <= 60 years of age lived significantly longer as patients > 60 years of age (p = 0.022). Conclusion: We were able to demonstrate in a large retrospective analysis that additional treatment with dendritic cells (LANEX-DC (R)) is highly effective and extends the median survival times up to 8.9 months. Furthermore we were able to demonstrate that median survival can be increased by early beginning and repetition of LANEX-DC (R) treatment.