New And Innovative Cancer Treatment

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Will it be possible to cure skin cancer with a few simple injections? According to a new Nature report, the answer is yes.

Two clinical studies showed that vaccines tailored to match a person's specific constellation of cancer mutations have worked to fight tumors.

These vaccines could fight cancer in humans. And the reports also allude to the possibilities of strengthening the power of these when combined with immunotherapy treatments.

"This could change everything," said Cornelis Melief, a cancer immunologist who is also the author of both studies. "These reports indicate that our patients benefited from the clinical treatment."

Vaccines are similar to those used to fight infections: they combine the components of cancer with agents that stimulate an immune response. This is injected into the patient in the hope that it creates a strong immune attack that will rid the cancer.

Nature did two studies, one in Boston and the other in Germany. In the one in Boston, they treated six patients with melanoma. For each of them they formulated a vaccine that had up to 20 protein fragments that corresponded to the mutations in their specific tumors.

To provide context, an average of half of melanoma patients fall into remission.

Two years after receiving the vaccines, four of those patients reported that they did not have the tumors again. The other two did not have the same fortune, but they experienced complete remission after adding to the treatment a drug that strengthens the immune system by blocking a protein called PD-1.

In the German study, they treated 13 melanoma patients with vaccines that carried RNA (acid that serves as a messenger to instruct DNA to control protein production) with 10 mutated proteins. One year after receiving them, all eight patients with visible tumors reported complete remission. Of the other five, tumors shrunk in two of them, but then one re-emerged in one. Another patient had complete remission after combining treatment with a PD-1 inhibitor.

It is not yet clear how many types of cancer will work with this personalized treatment, but a doctor from the German group, Ugur Sahin, says they have several clinical studies underway that will look for which ones respond better and how to better combine vaccines with other treatments.

"We are entering the next phase of rational cancer immunotherapy."

It is important to note that although these vaccines work against cancer they do not work against skin aging, so you still have to protect yourself from the sun's rays with sunscreen to maintain the youthful appearance of the skin.