Scientists at Stamford School of Medicine have developed a two-agent vaccine which, when it was injected directly into a single lymphoma tumour in mice, wiped out lymphoma throughout the body(1). The vaccine is being dubbed ‘localised immunotherapy’.
Vaccines as the majority of people understand, are used to prevent illnesses like polio. Cancer vaccines are used to treat cancer and have usually involved taking immune cells specific to the cancer from the patient, stimulating them in some way and then injecting them back in to the patient to get a stronger immune response. There have been various ‘vaccines’ and we have reviews elsewhere on CANCERactive on Dendritic Cell Therapy and ‘Virotherapy’.
Chris Woollams, former Oxford University Biochemist and founder of CANCERactive said, “What is different in the Stamford Vaccine is that nothing needs to be removed from the body. The vaccine works because under normal conditions, the immune system does protect people against cancer(2) and, when they develop cancer, the immune system produces T-Cells which recognize rogue proteins on the cancer cells and move in to attack. To avoid destruction, cancer produces blocks by producing compounds that weaken the T-cells.
This all hinges around a receptor on T-cells called OX40 which is responsible for attacking and killing rogue cells".
The Stamford vaccine uses two agents in a one-time injection directly into the tumour to reactivate the T-cells that are already there, had recognized the rogue cancer cells but had been switched off. The first agent (a short piece of DNA called CpG) stimulates more OX40; the second (an antibody that binds to OX40) turns the T-cells back on.”
The vaccine uses tiny amounts of both agents in the single injection, but the effect occurs across the whole body, since some of the re-activated T-cells (which recognized the original cancer cells), escape to roam the body. Indeed, a second experiment was performed where mice were given two different cancers – lymphoma, and colorectal cancer – and the injection into the lymphoma tumour cleared up all the lymphoma, but had no effect on the colorectal cancer, showing how cancer-specific an immune reaction is.
The research was led by Oncologist Ronald Levy and the Clinical Trial is now to be repeated in 15 Humans with low-grade lymphoma.
Go to: Overview on Lymphoma
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