It’s published
β’update
The so-called cancer vaccines have helped to extend the lifespan of some patients with pancreatic and intestinal cancer, early studies have found.
Even after patients undergo surgery and chemotherapy, these types of cancers often recur. If trace amounts of cancer remain in the body, the risk is high and allows the tumor to grow again.
To attack these malicious cells, scientists have been experimenting with cancer “vaccines,” a type of immunotherapy that encourages certain immune cells to recognize and kill cancer cells.
Pancreatic and intestinal cancer often occur when people carry mutations in the KRAS gene, which helps the growth of cancer tumors. Researchers say it will be an ideal target for cancer vaccines.
New findings published in Journal Natural Medicinestill need to be tested in large-scale studies. However, they indicate that immunity-enhancing treatments may be promising for certain cancer patients.
The early stage trials included only 25 people who completed standard treatment but still had cancer signs in the blood (20 with pancreatic cancer and 5 with bowel cancer).
Other experimental cancer vaccines have been personalized based on the patient’s specific oncoproteins, but the JAB used in this study was manufactured in bulk.
After an average of nearly 20 months, 17 patients receiving the vaccine developed a strong immune response to mutant tumor proteins.
Pancreatic cancer patients lived an average of 29 months after vaccination, including cancers over 15 months.
Patients with the strongest immune response also lived longer and remained cancer-free longer than patients with weaker responses.
The study authors said there are other therapeutic options targeting mutant KRAS proteins, but “off-the-fly” vaccines help train patients’ immune systems to recognize and attack these cancer cells.
Dr. Magnus Dillon, a clinical physician scientist at the UK Cancer Institute who was not involved in the study, called the results “very promising.”
“As many patients have these KRAS mutations, ready-made vaccines can benefit many people. They save the cost and time required to create a personalized vaccine,” Dillon said in a statement.
However, Dillon and other independent experts emphasized that researchers should examine their findings in larger studies before they can understand how effective they are.
“The results are promising and generate hypotheses, but they need to be tested in a larger, randomized study before we can see the clinical benefits,” Dr. Krum Khan, a London oncologist, said in a statement.
Richard Sullivan, director of the Institute for Cancer Policy at King’s College London, warned that early findings could be skewed as the study examined “two very different cancers with very different prognoses” both pancreatic and intestinal cancer.
“We’ve been here in this kind of approach before, but we’re not going to translate it into concrete validity,” Sullivan said in a statement.
JAB is currently being tested in a phase 2 randomized trial.