50 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.
My mother just died of ocular melanoma, but was in a trial for all melanomas. The trial drug had an effective rate of 40% and that was considered a huge increase over the previous of about 15-20%. 50% for a melanoma _vaccine_ is great.
Funny that this comes out the day after GlaxoSmithKline's melanoma vaccine failed in phase III.[0] Some science background on how these work. The idea is that some cancer types express specific proteins that can theoretically be targeted by your immune system, similar to how your immune system can target proteins from the Influenza virus. The goal of these vaccines is to make your immune system recognize this protein…
one dangerous thing is that most conventional cancer drugs cause immunosuppression (usually bone marrow suppression) so if you're taking these cancer vaccines you're going to be forgoing conventional treatments for the duration that you're on the vaccine. But if they have a higher success rate it would obviously be worth it; even if it has the same success rate since the vaccines would likely have less side effects.
I think the word cancer really is used to broadly and most people believe that cancer = cancer when in fact cancers vary widely. Sarcoma cancer is so different than say Leukemia that one trial that help one has zero impact on the other.
In cancer it is the scientific name that is so important to understand what is happening. I ask people what kind of cancer they have and they say I don't know its cancer my doctor knows and I just cry on the inside.
Funny that this comes out the day after GlaxoSmithKline's melanoma vaccine failed in phase III.[0] Some science background on how these work. The idea is that some cancer types express specific proteins that can theoretically be targeted by your immune system, similar to how your immune system can target proteins from the Influenza virus. The goal of these vaccines is to make your immune system recognize this protein…
one dangerous thing is that most conventional cancer drugs cause immunosuppression (usually bone marrow suppression) so if you're taking these cancer vaccines you're going to be forgoing conventional treatments for the duration that you're on the vaccine. But if they have a higher success rate it would obviously be worth it; even if it has the same success rate since the vaccines would likely have less side effects.
This does not appear to be correct, while one might logically conclude that a drug causing suppression would negate the effects of adoptive immunotherapy this doesn't appear to be the case.
Recent research (see below) suggests that apoptosis from chemotherapy may actually strengthen the immune response. The same group also conducted pre-clinical trials and observed that immunotherapy directly after chemotherapy was significantly more effective than either group alone or immunotherapy before chemotherapy.
If you do a literature search for adoptive immunotherapy in immunosuppressed patients you will find more studies. The only contraindication appears to be in patients with completely eliminated immune systems, which rarely happens because of chemo.
50 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?
Clinical trials only require you to prove your treatment is better than a placebo, you don't need to prove that it's better than existing drugs.
one dangerous thing is that most conventional cancer drugs cause immunosuppression (usually bone marrow suppression) so if you're taking these cancer vaccines you're going to be forgoing conventional treatments for the duration that you're on the vaccine. But if they have a higher success rate it would obviously be worth it; even if it has the same success rate since the vaccines would likely have less side effects.
This does not appear to be correct, while one might logically conclude that a drug causing suppression would negate the effects of adoptive immunotherapy this doesn't appear to be the case. Recent research (see below) suggests that apoptosis from chemotherapy may actually strengthen the immune response. The same group also conducted pre-clinical trials and observed that immunotherapy directly after chemotherapy was s…
cites two most relevant papers, one of which is specifically about the strategy to replace the chemotherapeutically depleted T cells with in vitro expanded ones, post chemotherapy. It's certainly possible, though, not enough studies have been conducted, and will probably depend on which chemotherapeutic compound is administering (small molecules tend to have differential spectra of activities). Doxycycline, in mice in at least one study was shown to have no particular effect on immunotherapeutic effect. Gemcitabine, which does do some immunosuppression but doesn't activate BER - so it only affects a subset of immune cells, does potentiate immunotherapies.