Successful experiments on mice show promise for the development of a vaccine against cancer.

We live in the era of the vaccines. It has been just a little over two hundred years since the first vaccine was invented against smallpox, and eventually eradicated the disease from the face of the earth. Since then, vaccines were devised against many kinds of diseases, which are almost nonexistent today. Now, a new type of vaccine is being developed, and may serve as the turning point of the war against cancer.

Much as in other diseases, theoretically there shouldn’t be any need for such a vaccine. The immune system is handling out-of-control cells all the time, by sending the cytotoxic T lymphocytes to bring an end to those who rebel against the body. However, occasionally the lymphocytes fail to kill the cancerous cells. When that happens, the lymphocytes keep ignoring the growing tumor and allow it to grow unfettered.

The best way to fight cancer, then, is by re-activating those lymphocytes and redirecting them to annihilate the tumor. But how do you activate them for a long enough time for them to destroy the large mass of cancerous cells? A new approach, pioneered by bioengineers and immunologists at Harvard University, might provide the answer for a cancer vaccine. In a paper published last week in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the authors describe the use of plastic disks impregnated with tumor-specific antigens. The tiny disks were implanted under the skin of mice to reprogram the mammalian immune system to attack tumors.

So, those bioengineers get ten out of ten for the innovative idea, but ideas are cheap in the scientific market. The interesting thing is that it actually works. Fourteen days after the vaccination, the mice received an injection of cancerous cells. Out of the control mice, who did not receive the vaccine, 100% died. Zero survival rate. Out of the vaccinated mice, 90% survived the tumor implantation. When the disk was implanted under the skin of mice that already had a solid tumor, it caused a complete regression of the tumors in seven out of fifteen mice. This is pretty exciting stuff!

When will the cancer vaccine hit the market? I expect that pretty soon some biomed company or another will pick up the glove and try to repeat those experiments with other animals and obtain the FDA approval for clinical trials on human beings. This is not going to be a magical cure for cancer – I think we’ve lost hope for that some time ago – but it might prove to be one of the key treatments of future medicine.

Source

The scientific paper

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