Scientists begin pioneering cancer vaccine which attacks tumours of individual patients

The first step towards a cancer vaccine designed to attack the tumours of individual patients has been taken in a pioneering experiment aimed at developing a completely new approach to cancer treatment.Conventional cancer therapy relies on surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy but the new approach is aimed at stimulating the body’s own immune defences to attacking invading cancer cells using the body’s natural “killer” T-cells.Doctors in the United States have published the early results of a prototype vaccine trial that is designed to stimulate the T-cells of the immune system to recognise and destroy a patient’s tumour cells. Three cancer patients received the experimental treatment and all are doing well, the researchers said.


The vaccine is made by studying the type of proteins present on the tumour cells of each patient, which differ from one individual to another. Personalised vaccines were infused into three patients with advanced melanoma skin cancer in order to study the number and diversity of the killer T-cells produced by their immune systems. The scientists found that in each patient there was a strong production of T-cells designed to target each patient’s melanoma cells with no apparent side-effects. One patient is still in complete remission, while the other two are “stable”, although it was too early to discover whether there was an improvement in symptoms due to the vaccines.



http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/scientists-begin-pioneering-cancer-vaccine-which-attacks-tumours-of-individual-patients-10153072.html

Always heartening to hear of new findings regarding Cancer.

Very interesting. The immune system does of course attack cancer cells already, but at some point something changes and it either misses some, or part of the immune system actually starts to assist the development of tumours.

Immunotherapy is big news in the treatment of cancer, and many new drugs are being developed these days. Some have been approved, and are useful, although I don't think any of them have replaced traditional treatments as such.