ATC Group: L03AX Other immunostimulants

BCG vaccine is an immunostimulating agent. It has anti-tumor activity, but the exact mechanism of action is not known.

Elapegademase is a recombinant adenosine deaminase (rADA). It provides an exogenous source of ADA enzyme that is associated with a decrease in toxic adenosine and deoxyadenosine nucleotides levels as well as an increase in lymphocyte number. Severe combined immune deficiency (SCID) associated with a deficiency of ADA enzyme is a rare, inherited, and often fatal disease.

Glatiramer is presumed to involve modulation of immune processes. Glatiramer is licensed for reduced frequency of relapses in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.

Histamine/IL-2 is an immunotherapy which aims to induce immune-mediated destruction of residual myeloid leukaemic cells and thereby to prevent relapse of leukaemia. The role of histamine is to protect lymphocytes, in particular NK cells and T cells, which are responsible for the immune-mediated destruction of residual leukaemic cells.

Leniolisib inhibits PI3K-delta by blocking the active binding site of PI3K-delta. In cell-free isolated enzyme assays, leniolisib was selective for PI3K-delta over PI3K-alpha (28-fold), PI3K-beta (43-fold), and PI3K-gamma (257-fold), as well as the broader kinome. In cell-based assays, leniolisib reduced pAkt pathway activity and inhibited proliferation and activation of B and T cell subsets.

Mifamurtide (MTP-PE) is a fully synthetic derivative of muramyl dipeptide (MDP). MTP-PE is a potent activator of monocytes and macrophages. The exact mechanism by which mifamurtide activation of monocytes and macrophages leads to anti-tumour activity in animals and humans is not yet known.

Plerixafor induces leukocytosis and elevations in circulating haematopoietic progenitor cell levels due to a disruption of CXCR4 binding to its cognate ligand, known as CXCL12, resulting in the appearance of both mature and pluripotent cells in the systemic circulation. CD34+ cells mobilised by plerixafor are functional and capable of engraftment with long-term repopulating capacity.

Sipuleucel-T is an autologous cellular immunotherapy designed to induce an immune response targeted against prostatic acid phosphatase (PAP), an antigen expressed in most prostate cancers. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells collected from the patients are cultured with PAP-GM-CSF, a fusion protein consisting of PAP linked to granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) an immune cell activator. During ex vivo culture with PAP-GM-CSF, activated APCs (antigen presenting cells) take up and process the recombinant target antigen into peptides that are then presented to T cells.

Tasonermin is cytotoxic or cytostatic in vitro for a variety of tumour cell lines of different histogenesis. Tasonermin affects the morphology and reduces proliferation of endothelial cells. Also, it has profound effects on cellular components of the immune system.