Vaccine may shift odds against deadly brain cancer

Vaccines are the new and different approach to treating cancers. Doctors and researchers at Duke and Johns Hopkins have developed a vaccine called CDX-110 to treat glioblastoma (GBM). The CDX-110 vaccine is different from most vaccines because it’s reactive not proactive. CDX-110 can’t prevent diseases; instead it tells the immune system to attack the “intruding” cancer cells. It does this by targeting EGFR factor three which is a protein produced by forty percent of cancer cells. So far, at least one patient has made it over six years with out a relapse.

The University of California in San Francisco is currently researching a similar vaccine. They consider their vaccine “ultimately personalized medicine” because each vaccine is custom made for each GBM patient. UCSF’s vaccine works by targeting heat-shock protein that is mass-produced by tumor cells. This vaccine is currently in the early trail stages; information about its first multicellular trial will be released later this spring.

If the vaccines are successful, they will be a better treatment option then chemotherapy or radiation because they allow the immune system to precisely attack the cancer cells. This means fewer side affects for the patients.

I think that cancer vaccines are an exciting and promising area of research. I appreciate how difficult it is to find cell targets because we did a lot of research of them for our nanobot project last semester. But, I feel that hope for effective cancer treatments through continued research of vaccines that target cancer cells.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/04/vaccine.brain.cancer/index.html