A small pilot study raises hopes that personalized cancer vaccines might prove safer and more effective than immune-based therapies already in use or further along in development. In a paper published online in Nature on Wednesday, scientists reported that all six melanoma patients who received an experimental, custom-made vaccine seemed to benefit: their tumors did not return after treatment.
Researchers not involved in the study praised its results, but with caveats. The scientists “did a beautiful job,” said MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Greg Lizee, an expert in tumor immunology, who called the results “very encouraging.” But because the study did not include a comparison group of patients who received standard treatment and not the vaccine, he cautioned, “it’s not completely proved yet that the lack of [cancer] recurrence was due to the vaccine.”
The first cancer immunotherapies were drugs such as pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and ipilimumab (Yervoy), which interfere with molecules that block immune cells from attacking a tumor. But that’s an effective strategy only if any such immune cells are trying to reach the tumor; if not, clearing a path for something that’s nowhere to be found doesn’t help. That’s a big reason why immunotherapy drugs help in only a minority of cancers: For many tumors, immune cells are AWOL.
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This is tremendously interesting! Scientific discovery in the finest form!
Vaccines are poison.
Chris are you mentally challenged?
Thank you so much for not overstating the results of this study and by being so clear about its limitations. It’s refreshing.