Good news! Scientists just too a big step towards
developing what could be the first ‘universal cancer vaccine.’
The results from the early trials in
humans, along with research in mice, was just published, and they suggest that
the new technique could be used to activate patients’ immune system against any
type of tumor anywhere in your body.
Unlike the common vaccines, this
potential vaccine would be given to patients who already have cancer, instead
of those who are at risk of getting it. It basically works by shooting tiny ‘darts’
containing pieces of RNA extracted from the patient’s cancer cells at the body’s
own immune system, convincing them to launch an all-out attack on any tumors
they come across.
In theory, by just changing the RNA
inside those darts, the team can mobilize the immune system against any kind of
cancer.
Immunotherapy, which involves using
the patient’s own immune system to attack cancer is new at all. Researchers are
already using it against different caner types with great results.
But until now, researchers have mostly
done this by genetically engineering special, cancer-targeting immune cells in
the lab, and then injecting them back into a patient - which is a
time-consuming and expensive process.
However, the difference with this
technique is that the vaccine is made in the lab, and it introduces the cancer
DNA into the immune cells within the body, which is a lot less invasive. It also
means that the vaccine can be modified to hunt a range of cancer types.
Immune system cannot naturally take
out cancer types because cancer cells are similar in many ways to normal cells
and immune system avoids attacking the self.
That means that when you develop a
vaccine, you need an antigen, a foreign molecule that works like a ‘mugshot’
for the immune system, to sort them apart from the normal cells.
It's this kind of cancer-specific
antigen that the new vaccine is designed to deliver to the immune system. It
works by coating the cancer RNA in a simple, fatty acid membrane, and giving it
a slightly negative charge.
This means that once the vaccine is
injected into a patient, it's drawn via electric charge towards dendritic
immune cells in the spleen, lymph nodes, and bone marrow.
These dendritic cells then 'show' the
cancer RNA to the body's T cells and, to anthropomorphise the situation, pretty
much tell them that it is the target. The goal is that the T cells will then go
out and mass murder all the cancer cells in the body.
German researchers have introduced
this vaccine on mine and once injected, the immune system was about to fight “aggressively
growing” tumors. However, mice cannot be compared to humans so the results may
still differ.
The team now has trialed a version of
the vaccine in three patients with melanoma. The point of the trial was only to
test whether the vaccine was safe to use in humans, not whether it was
effective, and so far, the results are promising. The side effects were limited
to flu-like symptoms, which is better than most chemotherapy treatments.
Source: Science Alert
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