The future of cancer treatment could involve personalized vaccines designed to manage or even prevent relapses, at least if the new research published on Thursday continues to linger. In a small clinical trial, high-risk melanoma patients who received this vaccine were able to create long-term, a lasting immune response to your cancer, scientists say. They also remained alive four years after initial treatment, and most were actively disease-free.
Cancer vaccines have been a much sought after target by scientists for decades. There are two vaccines that can protect against viral diseases that are known to increase the risk of certain cancers, HPV and hepatitis B. But developing a widely effective vaccine that can directly prevent cancer from occurring has been a more difficult task. thanks to the very nature of cancer. On the one hand, cancer cells are mutated versions of the cells that are in our body, so our immune system cannot recognize them as enemies as easily as a virus. And because every cancer is specific to every person, it’s not that simple to create a vaccine that works for everyone.
In recent years, however, there have been advances in the development of cancer vaccines on a more personalized level. Researchers have found that tumors carry proteins on the surface of their cells that are not found in normal cells and that can make them look different to our immune system. These proteins are called neoantigens. By creating vaccines that train the immune system to better recognize these neoantigens, scientists theorize, we can give our bodies a better chance to fight family cancer.
Scientists at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Massachusetts and elsewhere have been working on one of these vaccines (called NeoVax) against skin cancer melanoma and glioblastoma, the most common form of brain cancer and very difficult to treat. Although his work has done so is shown that the vaccine is well tolerated and appears to create an immune response in patients, so far there have only been short-term results. Its novelty paper, published in Nature Medicine, suggests that their vaccine also works in the long term.
“These neoantigens are the result of mutations found in a specific tumor, it’s something that is created on an individual level. So our vaccines have to adapt to a patient’s cancer,” he said by phone. study author Patrick Ott. “But the novelty is that, through the use of genomics and sequencing, we have been able to identify these mutations much more quickly and cost-effectively than before.”
G / O Media may receive a commission
NeoVax was given to eight patients considered at high risk for future, possibly fatal, recurrences of advanced melanoma. They then monitored their health for the next four years, periodically taking blood samples to study the body’s immune response to cancer, particularly tumor-specific T cells.
The vaccine was given to patients about 18 weeks after surgery to remove the tumor. Ott and his team found that the volunteers continued to transport neoantigen-specific T cells that their vaccine had trained to remember the immune system. In some people, they also saw T cells that recognized other tumor-specific neoantigens. This is an indication that your immune system is adapting to the body’s persistent tumor cells by creating even more weapons against them. All eight patients were still alive after nearly four years, and six appear to be disease-free at the last entry record.
Right now, scientists like Ott spend three months diagnosing a person to create a personalized vaccine. But it is possible that one day these vaccines can be created in a much shorter time, after a simple visit to the doctor. And while they may not be the “universal” cancer vaccine we all hope for, Ott sees no reason why these vaccines can’t end up helping to prevent the relapse of any type of cancer.
It is likely that vaccines can be combined with other treatments. Two cancer patients from the study were given that spread to other sites immune checkpoint inhibitors, drugs that allow the immune system to better target tumor cells. In these patients, the group found evidence that tumor-specific T cells had found their way to tumors with metastasis.
In the future, Ott and his team hope to hone their vaccine technology to create even more powerful immune responses that, combined with drugs as checkpoint immune inhibitors, can manage advanced cases of cancer. Now they are also testing their vaccine with other cancers, while continuing to monitor its existing patients.