A brand new personalized cancer vaccine has been designed to target 20 mutated proteins unique to each patient’s tumors. The vaccine seems to have prevented early relapses in 12 patients with skin cancer, making them cancer free for more than 2 years
A therapy for each patient:
There are many different forms of Cancer and it is not unusual for patients to endure multiple kinds of treatments before arriving to the one that is effective against their form of cancer.
The severity of cancer has fueled physicians and scientists to explore any possible pathway and solution including those that seem natural and unconventional. Researchers are now taking vaccines that typically target viruses and bacteria and reworking them in patient’s specific cancer cells.
Physicians and scientists at the Cancer institute in Boston presented their results of their new cancer to the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). These vaccines have prevented early relapse in 12 patients with skin cancer while also boosting patient immunity in combination with a cancer drug.
Earlier cancer vaccines targeted a singular cancer protein however these personalized vaccines contain Neoantigens, that are mutated proteins specific to an individual patient’s tumor. These neoantigens are identified once a patient’s tumor is genomically sequenced, enabling physicians with the data they need to pinpoint unique mutations. When a patient’s immune system is provided a dose of the tumor neoantigens, it activates the patient’s T cells to attack cancer cells.
NEOANTIGENS TO THE RESCUE:
Unlike previous attempts towards cancer vaccines, that did not produce conclusive evidence in stopping the progression of cancer growth, this personalized vaccine is much more specific to each patient’s cancer- targeting 20 neoantigens/ patient. They were injected on the patient’s skin for a period of 5 months and indicated no adverse effects and a strong T-cell response.
All those patient’s who were administered the personal vaccine are still cancer-free for more than 2 and half years after the trial. However, some patients with advanced stages of cancer required some extra punching power to fend off their diseases. Two of the patients had relapses and were administered an immunotherapy drug, PD-1 Checkpoint inhibitor + personalized vaccine. Fusion of Personalized vaccine and immunotherapy drug makes it difficult for the tumor to evade the immune cells.
There is lot of clinical testing requirement regarding this and many physicians around the world are working together to test the potency of neoantigens to verify the efficiency of this vaccine over the current immunotherapy drug over a sustainable period. These are costly and takes months to create that makes it as a limiting factor in providing care for patients with progressing cancers.
These personalized vaccines evoke interest in many oncologists with more than a million new patients being diagnosed with cancer each year in the U.S alone and the available chemotherapy agents themselves can be very toxic.
When proven safe and effective this vaccine could give patients around the world hope for powerful treatment.