An almost universal vaccine for cancer treatment?
A vaccine against any cancer
Israeli scientists create a universal cancer vaccine
Sofia Neskuchnaya, Newspaper.RuA therapy has been developed that affects a molecule characteristic of 90% of all types of cancer cells.
With its help, scientists hope to create a universal vaccine, the injection of which will allow the immune system of all patients, without exception, to independently defeat the main types of cancer, including breast cancer and prostate cancer. However, these results have yet to be officially published in peer-reviewed journals.
Western media are reporting in large numbers about the development of a universal cancer vaccine by Israeli scientists from Tel Aviv University. So far, the preliminary results of clinical trials are encouraging: the vaccine is able to trigger an immune response in the body of patients, which, at least, facilitates the course of the disease.
The creators of the technique plan to expand the scale of clinical trials for patients with different types of cancer in order to study in detail the activity of the vaccine for each of them. They believe that such an injection, to begin with, will be an ideal means to fight cancer in the early stages, when it was possible to fix small tumors. Even more important is the preventive action: the vaccine will be administered to patients from risk groups.
The difficulty of fighting cancer is that cancer cells have a unique ability to avoid threats from the immune system. Masquerading as ordinary cells of the body, cancer cells do not allow the immune system to recognize itself as a threat.
The fact is that the immune system is "tuned" to fight foreign cells – bacteria or viruses. Tumor cells originate from the patient's own cells, mutated and reprogrammed into cancer cells.
Israeli scientists used a special molecule, MUC1, to develop the vaccine, which is found in large quantities on the surface of cancer cells. And if the immune system is "taught" to recognize this molecule, it will be able to register the occurrence of tumors.
MUC1 (mucin-1, CD227) is a membrane protein, a proteoglycan from the mucin group. It is synthesized by the apical surface of epithelial cells and provides their protection from bacteria and enzymes – VM.
In collaboration with Vaxil Biotheraputics, doctors have developed a vaccine that carries a small portion of the MUC1 biomolecule. With its help, the vaccine "inoculates" the immune system, which then successfully detects and destroys cancer cells bearing the same label – and most of them.
"The ImMucin vaccine generates a stable and specific immune response in all patients under observation after administration of only 2-4 doses. The best effect is achieved after 12 doses," says Vaxil Biotheraputics, dedicated to the creation of the vaccine.
Clinical trials of the vaccine's safety were conducted at the Jerusalem Medical Center. Ten patients suffering from multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer, received a course of vaccine. Seven of them have now completed treatment, and, according to Vaxil, their immunity has begun to fight cancer much more actively than it did before the introduction of the vaccine.
Three of the patients were able to completely overcome the disease as a result of combined treatment. These results confirm the findings of a mouse study published in the journal Vaccine (ImMucin: A novel therapeutic vaccine with promiscuous MHC binding for the treatment of MUC1-expressing tumors). It also reports on the better survival of cancer patients treated with the new vaccine.
Anyway, the vaccine still has long-term clinical trials and additional scientific research. A sample of 10 patients in just one hospital cannot be considered statistically significant even for one type of cancer, let alone generalizations to other types of tumors.
Despite the optimism, so far the results are not sufficiently proven even for official publication.
However, Vaxil is already making plans to commercialize the development: if all further tests are successful, the vaccine may appear on the market in six years.
If such a vaccine is created, then doctors will be able to recommend it to those patients who already have cancer. "Vaccination" will help the traditional means of treating the disease, that is, the primary is the therapeutic, not the preventive effect of the drug. Another danger is that healthy cells also contain some amounts of MUC1, however, the creators of the vaccine assure that the "vaccinated" immune system will generate a response only to cancer cells in which MUC1 is much larger.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru09.04.2012