Scientists have worked for years to harness the power of the immune system. New approaches make researchers optimistic about success.
While these vaccines are still a long way from approval, researchers think they represent the future of cancer care.
Most people are familiar with traditional vaccines that protect against influenza and such childhood diseases as measles, chickenpox and whooping cough. Two vaccines are approved to prevent infection with viruses that raise the risk of cancer: human papillomavirus and hepatitis B virus . “Targeting neoantigens is really something quite novel,” says Patrick Ott, clinical director of the Melanoma Disease Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who has been testing them in melanoma patients and in other cancers. In one recent small study, for example,. The other two patients’ tumors grew, but then regressed completely after they took additional immunotherapy drugs.
After a little more than two years, only two patients had recurrences: one developed another tumor in the same breast, the second patient experienced a recurrence in the lymph nodes, “but that patient did not complete the full vaccination course,” having received only four doses, Degnim says.