Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
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Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
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Re: Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
#250 percent of mice treated with two doses of the vaccine...showed complete tumor regression.
I would have thought clinical trials would require a higher success rate... is it only because it's the last resort and patients would otherwise die anyways?
Re: Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
#3Unlike most vaccines, including the HPV vaccine meant to prevent cervical cancer, this is not prophylactic, it's not meant to prevent cancer. Rather, it's a therapy to get rid of cancer once you have it by targeting your immune system towards cancer cells.
Many (most?) cancers have some degree of immune system involvement. In early stages of cancer, the immune system often attacks tumor cells. In later stages of cancer, tumor cells can evolve the behavior of secreting signals to attract the type of immune cells that can support the tumor by doing things such as promoting blood vessel growth. We know a lot about the immune system, and I would venture that we understand more of the immune system's complexity than any other system in the body, but we still don't know all the dynamics. For example, we know the development pathways from blood stem cell to differentiated immune cells, but not all the key factors, or how to push it just this way or that.
This is not the first cancer vaccine, but it is an interesting new way to attempt to reprogram the immune system.
Re: Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
#4I'm interested in the other 50%. No affect? Less affect?
Re: Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
#550 percent of mice treated with two doses of the vaccine...showed complete tumor regression. I would have thought clinical trials would require a higher success rate... is it only because it's the last resort and patients would otherwise die anyways?
I imagine that the success rate varies according to the disease. If it was a flu vaccine then it would be laughed out at 50%, but for cancer I'm guessing 50% is a mindblowingly awesome success rate.
Re: Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
#650 percent of mice treated with two doses of the vaccine...showed complete tumor regression. I would have thought clinical trials would require a higher success rate... is it only because it's the last resort and patients would otherwise die anyways?
> I would have thought clinical trials would require a higher success rate...
Why?
If its better than than the alternatives (including consideration of side effects), why would it need to be completely successful in more than 50% of cases to pass a trial?
Re: Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
#750 percent of mice treated with two doses of the vaccine...showed complete tumor regression. I would have thought clinical trials would require a higher success rate... is it only because it's the last resort and patients would otherwise die anyways?
It depends on the percentage of people who show complete tumor regression with existing approaches, and on the relative costs and side effects. For instance, if only 25 percent of people show complete tumor regression with existing approaches, then getting the number up to 50 percent is a huge deal. Or, if the percentage is in line with existing approaches but the cost is much lower, that's another big win.
Re: Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
#8I'm interested in the other 50%. No affect? Less affect?
I'd like to know this too.
If the assumption is that they are marching to death prior to vaccine administration can it get much worse than that?
Re: Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
#950 percent of mice treated with two doses of the vaccine...showed complete tumor regression. I would have thought clinical trials would require a higher success rate... is it only because it's the last resort and patients would otherwise die anyways?
This issue was well-presented and discussed a few days ago:
Re: Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
#10"The goal of the Phase I study, which is expected to conclude in 2015, is to assess the safety of the vaccine in humans."
This is a fairly written press release, which besides the hopeful language common to any university press release about science research[1] manages to mention how preliminary this research still is. Many treatments that show promise in animal models do not ultimately have clinical usefulness for human patients. It would be wonderful if this approach to treating cancer is shown to be safe for human beings, which is the issue explored in a phase I clinical trial. Then further research will have to explore whether or not this approach is effective in human patients--which is not a sure thing even if it is effective in mice. After that, doctors will have to evaluate the treatment's overall safety and effectiveness compared to all other treatments available by the unknown future date when some new treatment reaches clinical use. There will also be the issue, of course, that two kinds of treatment may have similar safety and effectiveness profiles but differ radically in cost.
All in all, good news at the first step, with a lot more to be found out before we know whether this will help us dodge the bullet of cancer in our own lifetimes.