Cancer vaccine successfully passed clinical trials
The two research groups from USA, Germany and Austria announced the successful completion of clinical trials of cancer vaccines on small groups of patients.
Articles describing work on the vaccine was published in the journal Nature.
Vaccines have been developed similar to those used to combat infectious diseases. Them cancer cells are mixed with drugs that stimulate the immune response. However, in order to develop an individual vaccine need cancer cells from the patient, that is, such treatment is only available to those patients in whom the disease has manifested.
Work on the vaccine began with the genetic analysis, which allowed to identify proteins in the tumor of every person to select the mutant proteins that are most likely to cause an immune response and use them as the basis for the vaccine.
One group under the leadership of scientists from the Institute of cancer research Dana-Farber tested the vaccine in three patients with melanoma, a type of skin cancer. Each of them was created the vaccine with 20 fragments of proteins associated with mutations in the tumors.
Patients had high chances of recurrence of tumor two years after the introduction of the vaccine about four of them there were no signs of a return of the disease.
Scientists from the second group were administered the vaccine to 13 patients with melanoma. The vaccine consisted of ten mutated proteins each of the patients. Eight participants, who managed to beat cancer at the time of vaccination, tumors were not evident more than a year. Five patients doctors injected the vaccine when they already had visible tumors. Two of them malignancy has decreased, but one tumor had returned.
The work of the authors confirm the effectiveness of the approach, which has already received support in the academic environment. Scientists also suggest that the vaccine will be more effective if combined with drugs designed to strengthen the immune system.