Are Cancer Vaccines Almost a Reality -- Progress with Ovarian And Breast cancers in US and Israel

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November 19, 2011--

There is encouraging news on the cancer fighter front this month in two separate studies. The first was published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research -- showed that treatment with cancer vaccine produced encouraging results in a trial of women with metastatic breast or ovarian cancer (cancer that has spread to other sites around the body).

The other is a therapeutic cancer vaccine developed by an Israeli company, Vaxil BioTherapeutics with a technology called VaxHit , which is now in clinical trials at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem.

That particular vaccine is currently being tested against a type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma. Should it pass that test then it could be applied to 90% of all known cancers, including prostate and breast cancer, solid and non-solid tumors.

Cancer Vaccines Are Really Treatments and Not Immunizations

These advance do not imply that there will be soon an immunization shot one could take to prevent theses cancers, as we do with polio or small pox. Cancer vaccines are actually treatments for existing cancers. They work instead by ramping up immune responses to a cancer someone already has.

The cancer vaccines are not inoculations but treatments. They help to direct the body's own defenses to kill cancer cells as the T-cell above is doing.

Vaxil's lead product, ImMucin, activates the immune system by training T-cells -- the immune cells that protect the body by searching out and destroying cells that display a specific marker not found on healthy cells.

The T-cells don't attack any cells without that cancer marker, meaning there are no side effects unlike traditional cancer treatments like radiation and chemotherapy. More than 90% of different cancers have the MUC1 marker on their cells, which indicates the potential for this vaccine.

For cancers in an advanced stage, treatments like chemo or surgery to remove a large tumor will still be needed, but if the cancer can be brought down to scale, the body is then able to deal with it with aid from these cancer vaccines. The patient's own immune system can stop the cancer from reoccurring.

Cancer is the Body's Cells Run Astray

Why is cancer so hard to treat? Cancer is different from a disease caused by a foreign body such as bacteria or viruses, those can be identified by our own bodily defense systems and irradiated. Or, treated with drugs.

Cancer is our own cells forming different diseases and start a rapid unregulated cell growth which form malignant tumors and invade nearby parts of the body. They may also spread to more distant parts of the body through the lymphatic system or bloodstream.

Although our immune systems does have the power to identify and fight cancer cells it is not naturally effective . The issue is caused by bits of protein that are present on cancer cells only trigger a weak response.

To get around that problem, the researchers genetically engineered a poxvirus so that once it got into cells it would produce two proteins often associated with tumor cells. The virus was also engineered to produce several other proteins that would stimulate T-cells of the immune system to do a better job.

Posting date: 11/19/2011

Source: Clinical Cancer Research

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