Personalized immunotherapy helps fight cancer

Personalized vaccination: Immunotherapy for cancer

07/04/2015

Every year around half a million people in Germany receive the diagnosis of cancer. Mostly followed by surgery, chemotherapy and / or radiation. In the meantime, more and more people are turning to personalized therapies for cancer. The so-called immunotherapy is a new treatment approach that holds great hopes for patients.

Personalized vaccination
Medics have trained the immune system of melanoma patients on their tumor with a personalized vaccine, the news agency dpa reports. It has been reported that the therapeutic vaccines elicited a massive immune response against tumor constituents. The researchers led by Beatriz Carreno from the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, USA, report that they were well tolerated by the three patients. First, the still ongoing Phase 1 study is only to examine the safety of the procedure and the reaction of the body's defense. The scientists classify it as a proof of concept, „proof of principle“, on. In the journal „Science“ you write: „The personalized immunotherapies targeting individual tumor alterations could become possible in the near future.“

Vaccination tested in skin cancer patients
In recent years, various approaches have been reported in which cancer is combated with immunotherapies. Generally, these are based on using the immune system of patients against tumors. The US scientists are now testing a special vaccination procedure on three patients with advanced black skin cancer, melanoma, whose cancer cells had reached the lymph nodes. The researchers tailored the therapy exactly to the individual tumor of each patient. After removal of the primary tumors, they sequenced their genomes to mutations that were typical of the particular skin cancer. The team headed by Carreno chose the seven patients for the vaccine who were expected to have a particularly strong immune response. They combined these with so-called dendritic cells of the immune system. After a total of three vaccinations, the physicians examined the blood of the patients for four months every week for the reaction of the body's defense. It was found that the vaccinations in each patient stimulated an individual response of T cells from different groups. After four months, the researchers found no side effects.

Procedure applicable to other types of cancer
„The feasibility study shows that these tailored vaccines trigger a very strong immune response“, explained study leader Gerald Linette. „The tumor antigens in the vaccinations provoked a broad response among those T cells of the immune system that are responsible for destroying tumors. Our results are preliminary, but in our opinion vaccines have therapeutic potential given the breadth and remarkable diversity of the T cell response.“ As the researchers report, the procedure shown in the study can also be applied to other tumors with a high mutation rate. As examples, they include lung, bladder and colorectal cancer.

Small number of study participants
In the opinion of Professor Ulrich Keilholz of the Berlin Charité, the study actually proves the principle that vaccination with selected components of one's own tumor can trigger a broad immune reaction. However, results from only three patients are not sufficient to draw further conclusions, said the expert in tumor immunology. Professor Volker Schirrmacher from the Immunological Oncology Center in Cologne commented similarly. In the meantime, methods have been developed to specifically identify typical individual mutations of a tumor with which a broad immune response can be triggered. However, it remains to be seen what this means for the therapy.

Treatment success in Germany
In Germany too, successes in immunotherapy against cancer have been achieved in recent years. At the beginning of the year, the 27-year-old Georgios Kessesidis was reported, who receives medication in the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg as part of a scientific study that helps his immune system recognize cancer cells and fight them on their own. Kessesidis initially suffered from nonspecific symptoms such as swollen lymph nodes and increased nighttime sweating. Diagnoses had initially always bronchitis or asthma revealed, also because the patient was reported to suffer from hay fever. It only took months to find out that Kesselsidis had lung cancer and that it was already at a very advanced stage of the disease. He was initially rated by experts as neither curable nor reasonably operable. That he still lives today and according to his own information „really good“ feels he owes immunotherapy. (Ad)