Therapeutic vaccine against cancer caused by papillomavirus
A new anti-cancer vaccine has been created
Roman Ivanov, Computer
Researchers from the Moffitt Cancer Center (USA) have developed and tested a synthetic vaccine on mice, confirming its effectiveness in the fight against oncological diseases caused by papillomavirus (HPV), which leads to cervical cancer.
They reported on their work in the journal Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy (Kelly Barrios, Esteban Celis. TriVax-HPV: an improved peptide-based therapeutic vaccination strategy against human papillomavirus-induced cancers).
According to Esteban Celis, one of the leaders of the study, anti-cancer vaccines can serve as a good alternative to traditional therapies, which most often lead to serious adverse side effects and are rarely effective when it comes to cancer in the late stages of its development. It is known that human papillomavirus is the root cause of 99% of cases of cervical cancer; it kills more than 250 thousand people annually. In addition, HPV is believed to actively provoke the appearance of head and neck cancer.
Let's clarify right away. Today we have two approved preventive vaccines against HPV virus strains that cause cervical cancer. Both are widely used and primarily serve to prevent HPV infections, but they cannot be used to treat a disease already caused by HPV. The creation of such a vaccine is the task of the current study.
In order to find an effective anti–cancer vaccine aimed at eliminating malignant tumors caused by the HIV virus, the staff of the medical faculty of the University of South Florida and the Moffitt Cancer Center (both in the USA) have developed a TriVax-HPV strategy. Its task is to generate a large number of cytotoxic T cells that would search for proteins secreted only by the tumor. The most obvious targets here are HPV16 – E6 and E7 virus proteins, which function as oncogenic, cancer-inducing. Thus, according to the idea of the researchers, a vaccine directed against these viral proteins should thus be an "ideal candidate" for creating immunity in the human body without generating autoimmune pathologies.
The vaccines created based on this strategy were tested on mice that suffered from HPV-16-activated tumors. At the same time, it was found that TriVax, a variant of the vaccine containing a synthetic fragment of the E7 protein, led to the complete disappearance of the tumor in all (!) mice, while unvaccinated mice continued to suffer from rapidly growing malignant neoplasms.
Yes, we admit that the result achieved by Florida scientists is extremely impressive. However, it was obtained in experiments on mice. Will this effect persist when testing vaccines on humans? There is no answer to this question yet.
Prepared based on the materials of Medical Xpress: Researchers develop and test new anti-cancer vaccine.
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