A team of researchers announces that they have developed a promising vaccine at the pre-clinical stage on several types of cancer. The first human trials will soon be scheduled.
While the cancer mortality rate has been steadily decreasing for 25 years, thanks in particular to improved treatments and diagnostic methods, this scourge still claims far too many victims every year. year. In France, it is estimated that more than 157,000 deaths from cancer occurred in 2018.
This is why several laboratories around the world are currently carrying out work with the aim of finding a way to prevent or cure these diseases. Some teams, in particular, are focusing on the development of a vaccine. We're not there yet, but progress is being made.
About two years ago, a study published in Science Translational Medicine , signed by researchers from Stanford University, notably pointed out that the injection of two immunostimulating agents directly into a tumor caused the recognition and destruction of cancer cells.
While technically it isn't, scientists had referred to this approach as a "vaccine" since the treatment elicits an immune response and can easily be administered by injection. Still, the method seems to work in mice. Next step:Man.
Last year, another team also detailed promising early results from the first phase of clinical testing of a colorectal cancer vaccine. It is one of the most widespread in France, with 43,336 new cases estimated in 2018.
As part of this study, published in the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer , the researchers then discovered that all colorectal cancers seem to express a molecule called GUCY2C. The idea was therefore to design a vaccine capable of targeting this molecule.
Researchers at the Translational Research Institute in Australia, in collaboration with the University of Queensland, now offer another promising treatment.
In the journal Clinical and Translational Immunology , they assure that their vaccine could be used to treat breast, lung, kidney, ovarian and pancreatic cancers. The approach would also be very promising with blood cancers (myeloid leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, multiple myeloma and pediatric leukemias).
This vaccine works in the same way as many others, delivering specific proteins found on cancer cells. The idea is therefore to get the immune system to recognize these proteins in order to create memory cells . Later, if these same proteins show up, the immune system can then easily recognize the offending cells. To then destroy them.
Early trials showed that the vaccine successfully delivered the tumor-specific protein and invoked an immune response. At least on infected human cells and on mouse models. The next step, explain the researchers, will be to propose the same approach in the context of the first clinical trials.
Kristen Radford, lead author of this work, also thinks the vaccine could be much more viable than those currently under development.
"First, it can be produced as a 'standard' clinical grade formulation, she says. Overcome the financial and logistical problems associated with patient-specific vaccines” . And second, "this prototype vaccine targets key tumor cells necessary to initiate tumor-specific immune responses, thereby maximizing potential treatment efficacy, while minimizing potential side effects “.
