New Delhi: A Stanford University study has secured approval to conduct human tests for a cancer vaccine that had a 97% success rate in tests on mice.

Curing cancer may soon be as simple as going to the doctor and getting a shot, according to this new study.

The vaccine had cured 87 of the 90 mice and the rest were cured after a second treatment.

The experiment used two immune-stimulating agents to boost cancer-fighting T-cells, which gets suppressed in cancer patients.

Injecting minute amounts of two immune-stimulating agents directly into solid tumours in mice can eliminate all traces of cancer in the animals, including distant, untreated metastases, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The researchers believe the local application of very small amounts of the agents could serve as a rapid and relatively inexpensive cancer therapy that is unlikely to cause the adverse side effects often seen with body wide immune stimulation.

“When we use these two agents together, we see the elimination of tumors all over the body,” has said Ronald Levy, MD, professor of oncology. “This approach bypasses the need to identify tumor-specific immune targets and doesn’t require wholesale activation of the immune system or customization of a patient’s immune cells.”

Levy, who holds the Robert K. and Helen K. Summy Professorship in the School of Medicine, is the senior author of the study, which was published Jan. 31 in Science Translational Medicine.

He said. “Our approach uses a one-time application of very small amounts of two agents to stimulate the immune cells only within the tumor itself. In the mice, we saw amazing, body wide effects, including the elimination of tumors all over the animal.”

Cancers often exist in a strange kind of limbo with regard to the immune system. Immune cells like T cells recognize the abnormal proteins often present on cancer cells and infiltrate to attack the tumor. However, as the tumor grows, it often devises ways to suppress the activity of the T cells.

Therefore, Levy’s method works to reactivate the cancer-specific T cells by injecting microgram amounts of two agents directly into the tumor site:

One, a short stretch of DNA called a CpG oligonucleotide, works with other nearby immune cells to amplify the expression of an activating receptor called OX40 on the surface of the T cells.

The other, an antibody that binds to OX40, activates the T cells to lead the charge against the cancer cells. Because the two agents are injected directly into the tumor, only T cells that have infiltrated it are activated. In effect, these T cells are “prescreened” by the body to recognize only cancer-specific proteins.

He also informed that, the approach works for many different types of cancers, including those that arise spontaneously, the study found.

What Exactly The Study Has Found:

The approach worked startlingly well in laboratory mice with transplanted mouse lymphoma tumors in two sites on their bodies.

Injecting one tumor site with the two agents caused the regression not just of the treated tumor, but also of the second, untreated tumor. In this way, 87 of 90 mice were cured of the cancer.

Although the cancer recurred in three of the mice, the tumors again regressed after a second treatment.

The researchers saw similar results in mice bearing breast, colon and melanoma tumors. Mice genetically engineered to spontaneously develop breast cancers in all 10 of their mammary pads also responded to the treatment.

Treating the first tumor that arose often prevented the occurrence of future tumors and significantly increased the animals’ life span, the researchers found.

The current clinical trial is expected to recruit about 15 human patients with low-grade lymphoma. If successful, researchers believe the treatment could be useful for many tumor types.

Researchers  now envisions a future in which clinicians inject the two agents into solid tumors in humans prior to surgical removal of the cancer as a way to prevent recurrence due to unidentified metastases or lingering cancer cells, or even to head off the development of future tumors that arise due to genetic mutations.

The work is an example of Stanford Medicine’s focus on precision health, the goal of which is to anticipate and prevent disease in the healthy and precisely diagnose and treat disease in the ill.

References:

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org

http://med.stanford.edu

http://www.syracuse.com