A new vaccine could treat and prevent cancer using active cells

Posted on 1/5/2023 01:01 PM

(Credit: ED ALVES/CB/DAPress)

One A bifunctional vaccine can fight and prevent cancerous tumors. The treatment was developed to work on glioblastoma, which is an aggressive and deadly form of brain cancer. However, according to the researchers, it may work in other types of cancers. The treatment, considered an important milestone in the treatment and prevention of cancer, was tested on mice.

In a note, the director of the Center for Cellular Cancer Therapy, Harvard professor and author of the research, said, Khaled ShahHe said the team pursued a simple idea: using activated cancer cells to make them work against cancer, as is already done in vaccines against other diseases.

“Using genetic engineering to repurpose cancer cells to develop a therapeutic vaccine that kills cancer cells and boosts the immune system to destroy primary tumors and prevent cancer.”

According to the study, most cancer vaccines use inactivated cancer cells to help the immune system identify and eliminate any living tumor. However, this research planned to turn live cancer cells into anti-cancer agents that would destroy active cancer cells and allow the immune system to memorize how to fight them for next time.

Live cancer cells release immune modulators, which help the immune system destroy brain tumor cells, while also producing proteins on their surface that make them highly visible to immune cells. This helps them remember how to destroy similar cells next time.

promising approach

What makes this approach so promising is that, unlike inactivated cells, these live cancer cells can lodge in other cancer cells within the brain, delivering anticancer agents directly to target.

The vaccine was applied to mice that have immune systems similar to those of humans, bringing the results as close as possible to tests in humans. The treatment has been shown to be safe and effective in animals, providing a durable immune response.

According to Shah, in addition to glioblastoma, this method can also be effective in treating other solid tumors. “Our goal is to take an innovative and translatable approach so that we can develop a therapeutic vaccine for cancer that will eventually have a lasting impact on medicine,” the author said in the publication.

With the trial a success, they now believe there is a possible path to human testing once more safety testing is done. Shah concludes, “Our goal is to take an innovative and translatable approach so that we can develop a therapeutic vaccine for cancer that will have a lasting impact on medicine.”

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grant R01-NS121096) and published in the journal Translational Medicine Sciences This Wednesday (4/1).

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