Researchers From Queen Mary University Developing First Known Vaccine For Pancreatic Cancer
Source: Thailand Medical News Nov 27, 2019 5 years, 4 weeks, 7 hours, 8 minutes ago
Medical researchers from Queen Mary University of London in collaboration with the Zhengzhou University in China have developed a personalized
vaccine system that could ultimately delay the onset of
pancreatic cancer.
The research study provides strong proof-of-concept for the creation of a
vaccine for
cancer prevention in individuals at high risk of developing this disease and to slow down tumor growth in patients who are affected by it.
The research reports the team's work with a preclinical model using mice. The research was published today in
Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Though
vaccines do exist for some
cancers caused by known pathogens, such as the human papillomavirus in cervical cancer, vaccination against non-viral cancers has remained a challenge. In the study, researchers created a
vaccine system that doubled the survival time of mice with
pancreatic cancer. Importantly, the
vaccine system can be personalized for the individual receiving it and could potentially be tailored to work against other types of
cancer.
Typically,
vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize and kill pathogens within the body. To do this, immune cells must recognize molecules on the surface of the pathogens, called antigens. By injecting these antigens as a vaccine, the immune system can safely learn how to recognize them as foreign objects and remember this should they be found in the body again.
Dr Yaohe Wang, a Professor from Queen Mary University of London and the Sino-British Research Centre at Zhengzhou University in China, who led the study told
Thailand Medical News, "Development of a preventive vaccine against non-viral
cancers is hugely limited by the lack of appropriate tumor antigens and an effective approach to induce robust anti-tumor immunity against those antigens. Through this international collaboration we have made progress towards the development of a prophylactic
cancer vaccine against
pancreatic cancer.This is preliminary data from tests on mice but it could be a platform for developing personalized and powerful
cancer vaccines to reduce cancer incidence in at-risk individuals."
To develop the
vaccine, researchers took cells from mice and turned them into pancreatic cancer cells by adding two errors into their genetic code. These errors, or mutations, are known drivers of
pancreatic cancer. The team then infected these cells with viruses, which have an important role in the vaccine system. Not only do the viruses kill the cells to remove their ability to form tumors within the body, but they do so in a way that activates the immune system against these cells.
When the cells die following injection into the subject, they release antigens specific to these pancreatic
cancer cells, priming the immune system to recognize the initiation of
cancer and prevent its de
velopment within the body.
By introducing injections of these virus-infected cells into mice that were destined to develop
pancreatic cancer, the team were able to delay the onset of disease, doubling their survival time when compared with mice who did not receive the vaccine.
Normally, the genetic makeup of
cancer varies from individual to individual. That means treatments that are effective for one patient's
cancer may not be effective against another's. Notably, because the cells were derived from the mice that were going to receive the
vaccine, the cells created were genetically similar to the
cancer that was going to develop in these mice. This suggests that cells could be taken from at-risk individuals and used to create matching tumor cells for use in a
vaccine regime tailored to those individuals.
Unfortunately,
pancreatic cancer has the lowest survival rate of all the common
cancers, with less than 10 percent of those diagnosed surviving for longer than five years.
"One reason for this low survival rate is lack of symptoms, meaning diagnosis is often not made until the
cancer is at an advanced stage. This suggests a window of opportunity for the application of preventative
vaccine strategies. Although this research is at the early developmental stages, it provides strong evidence that the creation of a
vaccine against
pancreatic cancer is possible." commented Dr. Louisa Chard Dunmall, senior postdoctoral research fellow at Queen Mary and a member of the research team.
The
vaccine research was undertaken by scientists from the Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary, the Sino-British Research Centre at Zhengzhou University and the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The Sino-British Research Centre is a joint venture established by Queen Mary and Zhengzhou University.
The research team will now look at different ways of improving the regime including increasing the number of vaccinations or combining the
vaccine with other therapies such as immunotherapies.
Plans for human clinical trials will start as early as mid 2020.
Reference : Shuanshuang Lu et al. A Virus-Infected, Reprogrammed Somatic cell-derived Tumor cell (VIReST) vaccination regime can prevent initiation and progression of pancreatic cancer, Clinical Cancer Research (2019). DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-19-1395
