2024-04-21 00:48:06
Liver cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death worldwide, with approximately 800,000 people dying from it each year. Although medicine has advanced, targeted drugs and immunotherapy have been used to treat patients with advanced liver cancer, but their effectiveness is still very limited. Recently, scientists from Geneos Therapeutics and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the United States attempted to combine personalized cancer vaccines with current immunotherapy drugs to treat patients with advanced liver cancer . The results show that the effectiveness of immunotherapy can be doubled using cancer vaccines, recently published in the medical journal Nature Medicine.
Immune checkpoint inhibition therapy was once considered a new hope to reverse the cancer treatment dilemma, but it remains insufficient when it comes to liver cancer. It can generally only prolong the patient’s life, but cannot effectively reverse the disease. not all patients can benefit from it. Given the anti-cancer potential of cancer vaccines, research is attempting to create better treatments for liver cancer by combining immune checkpoint inhibitor drugs and cancer vaccines.
The first and second clinical trials involve the personalized DNA vaccine GNOS-PV02 developed by Geneos Therapeutics. Lead author Dr. Mark Yarchoan, associate professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, explained: “GNOS-PV02 works to educate the patient’s immune system to recognize cancer antigens on cancer cells to help the immune system to identify and attack cancer cells. more efficiently.”
The team adapts the vaccine to each patient. Because different patients have different genetic mutations in their cancer cells, they have unique cancer antigens. Only by creating a vaccine specifically for patients can the immune system be properly trained to identify their respective cancer antigens. Before making a personalized vaccine, it is necessary to obtain a sample of the patient’s cancer tissue and analyze the DNA to identify unique genetic mutations. Based on the results of the analysis, a vaccine that will be most beneficial to the patient can be made.
Personalized vaccines will become an important method of cancer treatment for the next generation
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the immune checkpoint inhibitor drug Keytruda to treat liver cancer as early as November 2018, but only a few patients had significant responses and the results were not as exciting as those for other cancers. On the other hand, most cancer vaccine clinical trials have failed because these vaccine designs ignore the importance of adaptation. Personalized cancer vaccine technology has finally achieved recent breakthroughs.
A total of 36 subjects with advanced liver cancer were included in the experiment. In addition to immune checkpoint inhibitor drugs, a personalized vaccine was administered every three weeks during the initial phase. Starting with the fifth dose, dosing was changed to every nine weeks. , then every 12 weeks following two years, vaccination is administered once and continued until the fifth year if the patient’s condition allows it. Most patients receive up to five doses of vaccine. Compared to other teams’ cancer vaccines, this vaccine contains more antigens, with up to 40 cancer antigens per dose. The results of the analysis showed that approximately 30% of patients were relieved following treatment and the effect was twice as effective as treatment with Keytruda alone. What’s even more exciting is that three patients’ tumors completely disappeared.
Cancer cells typically have accumulated thousands of DNA mutation points. How to identify important cancer antigens is a key technology for personalized vaccine development. As the computing power of chips continues to increase and artificial intelligence improves, cancer vaccines will surely be improved in the future. more effective in activating patient immunity. No more promotion. Most oncology experts believe that personalized cancer vaccines will become an important method of cancer treatment in the next generation.
(First image source: Shutterstock)
1713680258
#Current #immunotherapy #combined #personalized #cancer #vaccines #doubles #effectiveness #liver #cancer #treatment #Scientific #technological #news
