Experimental post-cancer treatment 'promising'
An experimental vaccine derived from tiny bits of tumour protein and involving a simple pinprick of the patient may prevent cancer from recurring, researchers believe.
Early results in 14 vaccinated survivors of advanced breast cancer have shown promise, according to researcher Dr George Peoples Jr of Walter Reed Army Medical Centre.
The vaccine triggered an immune-system response in all 14 that might potentially fight recurring cancer cells, said Peoples, who presented study results for an American College of Surgeons meeting in Chicago.
Dr Clifford Hudis, a breast cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, called the results promising and said they bolster previous evidence from similar breast cancer vaccine research.
While it is unclear if the results will translate into disease prevention, “it’s a critical first step,” Hudis said.
Vaccine studies are a burgeoning area of cancer research.
Unlike traditional vaccines, which generally aim to prevent disease, some experimental cancer vaccines are designed to treat or cure existing disease.
The women studied at Walter Reed all had received conventional treatment for cancer that had spread to the lymph nodes.
They had no symptoms when they were vaccinated but had lingering cancer cells and faced a high risk of relapse.
Peoples said if his study continued to show positive results, within a few years the vaccine might be tried in healthy women at high risk for breast cancer.
“This is a field that deserves a lot of work” and the early findings “suggest they’re on the right track,” said Dr Harmon Eyre, the American Cancer Society’s chief medical officer.
Eyre said that vaccines have already shown promise in preventing cancers related to infections.
The hepatitis B vaccine given to US newborns also prevents hepatitis-related liver cancer, and an experimental vaccine against a virus linked to cervical cancer also has had good results.
The vaccine used in the Walter Reed study was safe and caused no serious side effects. Cancer has recurred in two women, but they had the weakest immune response to the vaccine, Peoples said.
The vaccine targets a growth-stimulating protein called HER2/neu that appears on the surface of normal cells but in overabundant quantities on cancer cells in about 30% of women with breast cancer, Peoples said.
Cancer cells often are able to grow and spread because the body doesn’t recognise them as foreign.
But the researchers concocted the vaccine from tiny bits of that protein that are the most likely to trigger a disease-fighting immune response.
The vaccine also contains an approved drug that helps boost disease-fighting white blood cell counts.
