Personalized Lymphoma Vaccine
Patients with lymphoma were cured with a vaccine from their own cancer cellsBiovaxID therapeutic autologous vaccine for follicular lymphocytic (non—Hodgkin's) lymphoma increases the duration of remission - the period before relapse of the disease.
Stephen Schuster from the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania made a corresponding report at the congress of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), held in Orlando, Florida, the correspondent of Medpage Today reports.
BiovaxID is produced individually for each patient, from his own cancer cells. The molecules of an "idiotypic" (that is, individually characteristic) marker protein obtained from cells are combined with shellfish protein molecules, which, unlike cancer cell proteins, are uniquely recognized by the immune system as foreign.
The vaccine, which has passed the third stage of clinical trials (verification of effectiveness and monitoring of side effects), is administered together with stimulators of the patient's immune system. This combination makes it possible to slow down the progression of the disease for more than a year, since the patient's own immune system, which had not previously destroyed tumor cells, begins to fight them.
The vaccine itself has no serious side effects. One of the patients described the subjective sensations associated with the use of immune stimulation as "the worst flu I've ever had."
Usually, follicular lymphoma can be suppressed with chemotherapy, but after a year, relapses are characteristic of this type of cancer. Half of the patients die within five years, after seven years only one in ten remains alive.
In the trials, it was shown that patients who underwent chemotherapy and received an immunostimulator and a foreign shellfish protein, on average, relapses developed after 30.6 months, and patients who received an immunostimulator and a foreign protein with their own marker lived without relapses for 44 months.
This is a very significant achievement, since before, no matter what treatment methods were tried, with follicular lymphoma it was not possible to increase either the duration of the relapse-free period or survival.
The authors of the study claim that the developed technique can also be used to treat other forms of B-cell lymphomas (which include follicular lymphoma), since malignant cells in diseases of this group are characterized by specific proteins on the surface. The patient's immune system can be "forced" to recognize these proteins, destroying, as a result, tumor cells.
BiovaxID is the first therapeutic cancer vaccine that can enter clinical practice in the USA and Europe.
Medpagetoday: ASCO: Vaccine Slows Recurrence in Non-Hodgkin's LymphomaPortal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru/