New Vaccines Could Be Individually Tailored To Your Immune System In The Fight Against Cancer!
New Vaccines Could Be Individually Tailored To Your Immune System In The Fight Against Cancer!
In recent trials, vaccines tailored to the patient's immune system demonstrated positive results in the fight against cancer.
In recent trials, vaccines tailored to the patient's immune system demonstrated positive results in the fight against cancer.
It’s potentially a game changer.
Cornelis Melief
Cancer Immunologist at Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands
A New Weapon Against Cancer
Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands
Trials Give Optimistic Results
Researchers across the globe are hopeful that a new weapon against cancer will change the way we treat and even prevent potential cancer patients.
In combination with existing treatments, personalized vaccines may offer an additional barrier of protection to cancer patients against relapse.
Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard work together...
Glimmer of hope!
The first trial treated six people with melanoma, a type of skin cancer.
For each individual, researchers formulated a vaccine that contained up to 20 protein fragments corresponding to the mutations in their tumors. Prior to the vaccine, the patients also received surgery to remove their tumors, but were at a high risk for cancer recurrence.
Typically, the chance of cancer returning occurs in about half of all such melanoma patients. However, 12 out of 19 melanoma patients remained cancer-free for up to two years after receiving vaccines.
Would you be willing to receive a vaccine against certain types of cancer?
Would you be willing to receive a vaccine against certain types of cancer?
BioNTech Makes A Breakthrough!
Astounding results from a second trial...
The second trial, led by researchers at the German biotech BioNTech, contained messenger RNA, rather than the proteins themselves.
From the eight melanoma patients who had no visible tumors at the time they received the vaccine, all eight remained cancer-free after more than a year.
Additionally, five of those patients had already started to experience tumor regrowth by the time of vaccination but noticed a shrinking of their tumors.
One patient experienced complete remission after treatment.
What can we take from these trials?
What's the next step after seeing these positive results?
Cornelis Melief
Controlled, randomized Phase 2 clinical trials with more participants are now needed to establish the efficacy of these vaccines in patients with any type of cancer that has enough mutations to provide sufficient neoantigen targets for this type of approach.
Since the trials were performed on smaller groups, the next obstacle is to test them on various cancer types with more patients!
How do you feel about the vaccine trials?
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