Cancer Vaccine Development Program (CVDP)

The Cancer Vaccine Development Program (CVDP) was founded and directed since its inception in 2000 by COL George E Peoples, MD, FACS. In 2014, Dr. Peoples retired from the military and formed Cancer Insight, a commercial partner to the academic CVDP. Since that time, CVDP has been adopted by the Metis Foundation to continue its tradition of excellence in innovation. Our research focuses on the interaction between the immune system and cancer. Specifically, for the past 20 years, we have been designing, developing, and testing cancer vaccines for their ability to specifically stimulate the host immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells.

While this seemed like a distant dream for many years, the FDA-approved the first cancer vaccine, Provenge, in 2010 and the first active specific immunotherapy from BMS in 2011. Two subsequent checkpoint inhibitors have been approved since. These advances have energized the interest in our research and the vaccines that we have been developing for years. Currently, five of our vaccines, E75, GP2, E39, E39’, and AE37 have been licensed out to industry partners.