By CARLY CASSELLA: Click through for the full post…
A personalized vaccine for glioblastoma – the most aggressive and fatal type of brain cancer – has extended the survival of four humans in the first clinical trial of its kind.
The newly fashioned medicine works by supplying the immune system with a way to ‘recognize’ the tumor and an ‘instruction manual’ for its entire transcriptome. This reveals where each and every gene in the tumor can be turned on or off.
Equipped with such vital information, the immune system can reprogram the cancer’s defenses and launch a more successful attack.
In the recent clinical trial, four patients with treatment-resistant glioblastoma received either two or four doses of the vaccine. This resulted in significant and rapid immune activation.
Just hours after the vaccines were administered, researchers noticed a spike in pro-inflammatory proteins known to recruit killer white blood cells to the scene.
This early boost to the immune system was also linked to short-term side effects typical of an immune response, like nausea, low fever, and chills, which gradually faded over the next day or two.
“In less than 48 hours, we could see these tumors shifting from what we refer to as ‘cold’ – immune cold, very few immune cells, very silenced immune response – to ‘hot,’ very active immune response,” explains oncologist and pioneer of the vaccine research, Elias Sayour from the University of Florida.
“That was very surprising given how quick this happened, and what that told us is we were able to activate the early part of the immune system very rapidly against these cancers, and that’s critical to unlock the later effects of the immune response.”
