Two articles on cancer vaccines were published in the July 5 issue of Nature. According to articles, tumor vaccines are feasible in academia and industry, and the article confirms that people can find ways to overcome tumors from cancer patients themselves. In addition, heir study also provides a way to combine the vaccine with the immune system to improve the vaccine.
Tumor vaccines are similar in principle to traditional vaccines for infectious diseases. Tumor vaccines are "foreign components: tumor cells" and a mixture of stimulating immune response agents, so researchers first need to obtain patient-specific tumor cells, the preparation of patient-specific vaccine, then the vaccine back to the patient's body, hope the patient itself Can produce immune cells that recognize cancer cells and attack their own tumor cells. But unlike traditional vaccines, tumor vaccines need to be tailored, and their use is a period of prevention after the onset of cancer, rather than the traditional vaccine.
In the study, the researchers first of all patients with tumor cells in the protein encoding gene sequencing. They chose the the muteinwhich would most likely produce immune response, and as a basis for the vaccine.
Catherine Wu of the Dana-Farber Cancer Study in Boston, Massachusetts, led the completion of a clinical trial of cancer vaccine treatment. In their trial, a total of six melanoma patients (a skin cancer) were treated. In the trial, Catherine tailored a vaccine for each patient, which contained 20 protein fragments for their tumor cells. "Patients who underwent surgery are at high risk of cancer recurrence, but unless the cancer happens again, these patients will not be treated," says Catherine. "Typically, about half of melanoma patients will relapse."
After two years of treatment, four of the patients had no recurrence of the tumor and two patients had tumor formation. However, these two patients in the inhibition of PD-1 protein after the drug treatment, their immune system was awakened, their illness has also been completely relieved.
Another work published in the journal Nature was completed by a team led by Ugur Sahin, a physician who studies cancer immunology and cancer genomics at the University of Mainz in Germany. In their trial, a total of 13 patients with melanoma were treated and found to have more than 10 mutated RNAs in each treated tumor cell. At the time of treatment, 8 patients with a smaller tumor size did not find the tumor after one year. While the remaining five patients had spread during treatment, and the size of the two patients had been reduced, but the tumor of one of the patients had grown again. In addition, one patient after treatment with PD-1 inhibitor, the tumor completely disappeared.
Personalized cancer vaccines have been shown to stimulate immune responses in humans. However, the number of patients involved in the two clinical trials were less, and the lack of control group. Follow-up, academia and industry need to carry out some more large-scale trials.
In addition, in the two trials, the research team spent three months preparing and producing vaccines (the production cycle process leading to tumor vaccine treatment can not delay the development of many cancers). However, both teams said they could speed up the process of vaccine preparation and production, and Catherine said her team was able to shorten the production cycle to six weeks.
It is unclear how many kinds of cancer will react to this method. Cancer Vaccines If you can target several different cancer-related muteins, their efficacy may be optimal (reducing the likelihood that the tumor will develop resistance to the vaccine by shedding a particular mutation).
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