Merna personal vaccines show the promise as a treatment for pancreatic cancer, the first stage Clinical Wednesday was published in nature.
Less than 13 % One of the people with pancreatic cancer lives for more than five years, making it one of the most bloody types of cancer. This, partly, because it is about 90 % of cases It is diagnosed when the disease is already advanced.
Pancreatic cancer cells also spread to other parts of the body early early on other cancers, which usually spread only when the original tumors are large. The disease usually does not cause symptoms even stages at a later time and there is no routine examination of this cancer, such as x -ray imaging or colonoscopy.
Once detected, there are few effective treatments.
“Although we have made great progress in improving results in many other types of cancer with newer waves of cancer treatments, they had no significant effect on pancreatic cancer,” said Dr. Vinod Balsandran, Director of the Olayan Center for Cancer vaccines. In Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, which led the experiment. “The survival rate remains about 10 %, although our current treatments are.”
He said, this highlights the desperate need for more options.
Before the Covid’s RNA Rena vaccines were widely used, researchers were already developing cancer treatment technique. This version of the person’s vaccines knows the person’s immune system to identify and attack the tumors, and convert the immune system into a fight to combat cancer. MRNA technology is currently exploring melanoma, colon and rectal cancer and other solid tumors.
In order to be effective, flexible cancer vaccines must produce many T cells, a type of immune cell that protects the body from the invaders. These T cells also need a long time in cancer patients and keep their ability to discover and combat cancer cells. While this is a relatively clear achievement when it comes to viruses, teaching the T cells of a person to fight the unspeakable cells that the body itself has made more difficult.
For pancreatic cancer, the task is huge.
In order for the vaccine to know that the body gets to know the tumors, there must be targets on these unique cancer cells, which means that they do not appear elsewhere in the body. Since the tumors are created from the mutations, these mutations, which are expressed as proteins on the surface of cancer cells, act as targets. Pancreatic cancers usually do not contain many goals to choose from.
It was a widespread belief that this lack of mutations, which serves as the targets of a flexible cancer vaccine, would make pancreatic cancer a bad option for treatment. But the new study showed that the assumption may be a mistake.
The trial was a longer follow -up Initial experiment 2023 This first tested the effectiveness of vaccines in a sub -group of people with pancreatic cancer. The first stage of clinical trials is very early stages of research and aims to determine whether a specific treatment is safe and a promise to effectiveness.
The new experiment included 16 patients with operating pancreatic cancer, which means that the surgeon can remove tumors. This is relatively rare in pancreatic cancer – Only 20 % From pancreatic cancer, it is the only treatment that can stop this type of cancer. Chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy can reduce or prevent tumors from growth, but are not considered treatments. Wolpin said that in a percentage of smaller people, surgery can be performed without shrinking tumors first with chemotherapy. The cancer returns about half the time.
Follow Balachandran and his 16 team in the experiment for up to four years. Participants first removed their tumors between 2019 and 2021. Then, the team used genetic materials from each person’s tumors to design dedicated flexible vaccines who were hoping to teach the immune system for patients to attack their cancer cells.
In addition to the vaccine, all sixteen people have also been treated at the current level of care – chemotherapy, and immune therapy called atezolizumab.
Half people responded to the study – eight participants – to the vaccine, as they produced T cells that targeted their tumors. The other half did not respond to the vaccine.
One of the most important aspects of the person’s immune system to fight cancer is to ensure his response-in this case, T-CANCER-LAVEMING-Life-Lifted Cells. In this way, they remain in the body, fight the cancer cells that appear, instead of working for a short period of time.
In the people in the experience who responded, the vaccine will give the T cells that require cancer an average age of about eight years, according to the researchers’ estimate. They believe that about 20 % of T -cells can live and work for decades. The longer the T cells remained, the better it would protect against the return of cancer.
Early experiments aim to test whether the treatment is possible or not – in this case, if a flexible pancreatic vaccine can produce durable T cells.
The results indicate that it is possible. However, it is still not known whether these T -cells will extend a person’s life, and if so, as much as it is important for the following stages of experiments. Only two patients who responded to the vaccine were their cancer returns during a three -year follow -up, compared to seven of the eight who did not respond to vaccine treatments.
“You have to take this with a little perspective, and this does not treat hundreds of thousands of people,” said Dr. Brian Wolpin, Director of the Digestive Cancer Cancer Center at the Dana Farper Cancer Institute. “The fact that they were able to use a vaccine to generate in response to new mutations that appear in the tumors, then they were able to show that these defects are promising.”
Since the pancreatic cancer cells are the skill of spreading early, some organs may be sheltering non -detected cancer cells that do not appear on surveying operations, which means that these tumors are not treated.
Dr. Chopham Pant, a professor of medical oncology at the infection of the digestive system at the Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, said the immune system may be able to kill these cancer cells, as well as the new cells that appear.
Very early in the development of pancreatic cancer, “cells can escape and create a store elsewhere – in the liver or in the lungs. They may quietly sit in those other organs and then return.”
Despite the warning of being a small group of patients and a very early experience, Pant said, the results are encouraging.
Other search teams, including scientists, are working at MD Anderson, Frank vaccines outside the cliff For pancreatic cancer, in the sense that vaccines have a common goal in all pancreatic cancer tumors, rather than a personal goal based on a person’s individual tumor.
About 90 % of pancreatic cancer cases include a mutation called KRAS, which means that non -personal vaccines, which can be produced in large quantities and will not require a piece of a person’s tumor that can be created, can be another option on the road. (These vaccines are also in very early stages of search).
“This gives us a little more confidence that as soon as you get the response of T -cells, it can be solid, it is not a response to shock,” Pant said. “If we can see this response stands in greater experiences, this is really important.”