Researchers have found that a small vaccine, currently in its early trial phase, can enhance immune system response to fight advanced kidney cancer.
A team of researchers, led by Dr. David Braun of the Yale Cancer Centre, conveyed that the “personalized cancer vaccines” used by nine patients in the trial were targeted to genes specific to their tumors.
After administration of these vaccines, patients’ immune systems would seek and destroy stray cancer cells left behind after tumor-removal surgeries.
“The idea behind this trial was to specifically steer the immune system toward a target unique to the tumor,” said Braun.
“We want to improve post-surgery treatment options that reduce the risk of the cancer coming back,” he added in a Yale news release.
The study and findings were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
The experiment focused entirely on patients with advanced stage 3 or 4 clear cell kidney cell carcinoma (ccRCC).
The Yale team explained that immune-centered therapies against cancer cells already exist, but they aren’t designed to target the DNA of specific tumor cell types.
The personalized cancer vaccines (PCVs) used in the new experiment were made to target gene mutations common to ccRCC tumors — these types of tumors make up about 80% of all kidney cancers.
The trial on nine patients was only carried out to see if PCV as an immunotherapy was safe for the patients.
Five of the nine patients were treated with a PCV plus the immunotherapy drug ipilimumab after surgery, while the other four were given PCV treatments only after their surgeries.
All nine patients showed elevated levels of cancer-fighting T cells, which began within three weeks of treatment and lasted for years afterwards, the researchers reported.
Moreover, the T cells were also able to effectively recognize specific tumor cells in seven of the patients.
Patients didn’t report any side effects other than some flu-like symptoms experienced a day or two after the vaccine was administered.
