by An off-the-shelf vaccine has promised to prevent pancreatic and colon cancer from returning, as researchers have shown.
Cancer vaccines have been the subject of promising research in recent years. The NHS in England tested various jabs in patients via the Cancer Vaccination StartPad (CVLP).
Such vaccines train the body’s immune system to recognize cancer cells, so that everyone can be hunted and killed after treatments such as surgery, which reduces the risk of returning disease.
Many cancer vaccines, including some of the patient’s tumors based on the MRNA technology, are personalized.
However, a study has proposed that a non-personalized experimental vaccine that is already carried out on a scale could help prevent pancreatic and colon cancer.
In further experiments, experts could say that the approach could be advantageous, since the vaccine is probably cheaper and faster than MRNA jabs and less toxic than some other therapies.
“After a long-term follow-up of this study, we were able to demonstrate that the group of patients who assembled an immune response have a greater probability that their cancer will no longer return and live longer than the historical expectation of what this patient would do,” said Prof Zev Wainberg, oncologist at the University of California, Los Angeles and Co-Author of the study.
The authors found that 90% of people with pancreatic cancer and 50% of people with colon cancer had mutations in the Kras gene. These mutations lead to the production of changed Kras proteins, which cause the cells to share and multiply.
Wainberg and colleagues in the Nature Medicine magazine reported how they gave a vaccine called ELI-002 2p to 20 patients who were operated on because of pancreatic cancer and five who had been operated due to colon cancer.
The vaccine contains peptides – long chains of amino acids that are the building blocks of proteins. The vaccine works by training the body’s T cells in the immune system to identify and kill cancer cells with mutations that cause them to produce the changed Kras proteins.
With an average follow -up period of almost 20 months, the team found that the patients fell into two groups: 17 who had a strong immune response to the JAB and eight who had a weaker reaction.
The team found that the former group experienced a longer period before their cancer returned and survived overall. A total of four of these 17 patients died during the follow -up examination compared to seven of the eight who had a lower immune response.
However, the study consists in the early phase, which is mainly designed to assess security, only 25 participants involved, had no control persons and examined two very different types of cancer.
Nevertheless, experts said that the results were worth mentioning. Siow Ming Lee, Professor of Medical Oncology at University College London, who was not involved in the work, suggested that the ELI-002 2P vaccine could be combined with other immunotherapy types and that a wider range of patients could help.
“With promising early results and possibly fewer side effects than current oral inhibitors, this off-the-shelf cancer vaccine could expand the treatment options for crass-controlled cancer and guarantee further tests in larger studies, including the examination of potential use in lung cancer, which is examined by mutations in the crashing,” he said.
Dr. Shivan Sivakumar from the University of Birmingham, who works on mrNA-based pancreatic cancer vaccines, said that so many of the patients in the study are fascinating, a clear immune response to the off-the-shelf vaccine.
However, Sivakumar found that an essential advantage of personalized mRNA vaccines consisted of not relying on mutations in the Kras gene.
He said it was now important to carry out randomized control studies with the ELI-002 2P vaccine and to follow patients over a longer period of time.
“How many times were we on this garden path where we really were enthusiastic about science? But ultimately the real scientific experiment is actually in patients,” added Sivakumar.
