Scientists led by study author Professor David H. Koch of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found that vaccination in cancer therapy with certain fragments of cancer proteins can shrink a lung tumor or black skin cancer. Complete destruction is also possible, they say.
The teams‘ study concludes that fragments of cancer proteins are useful for cancer-fighting vaccines. Evidence has already been found in mouse models and clinical trials that certain cancer proteins enhance the normal response of immune system T cells. These protein molecules were found on tumors of mice after they were vaccinated with the fragments.
FDA approval in the U.S. is not yet in sight, however. Before that, further analyses must provide information. However, it seems clear that certain identified protein types enhance the immune response. At the beginning of the disease, cancer cells produce mutated proteins, so-called neoantigens, which the body’s own immune system recognizes as foreign, whereupon T cells destroy cancer cells. However, T-cell exhaustion then leads to renewed and unchecked tumor growth because competing T defense cells are suppressed.
Cancer vaccines in the study, however, can rejuvenate and support T cells in a way that helps them fight melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer. Identifying the neoantigens in and on tumors makes it possible to find personalized cancer vaccines in sufficient quantities, because only a small number of cancer sufferers have responded to the vaccine so far.
However, the scientific team is asking how the number of patients can be expanded and why so far only a few respond and elicit an appropriate T-cell response.
However, it has already been shown in mice with lung tumors that certain neoantigen vaccines containing T-cell subsets that bind weakly to immune cells can induce lung tumor burden shrinkage by 27 percent. So it takes specific mutant protein types that are then effective against tumors in the long term and that control the tumor well in the long term. A combination therapy of vaccination with certain neoantigens and anticancer drugs in the form of so-called checkpoint inhibitors has proven to be particularly promising. Further analyses must nevertheless follow in order to understand the exact relationship in detail.
Source: www.heilpraxisnet.de