New Vaccine Discovered By Scientists to Treat Cancer

Scientists have discovered a new approach for treating cancer based on manipulating the immune response to malignant tumors.

The team members of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, led by professor Kingston Mills, Professor of Experimental Immunology, also discovered a new vaccine to treat cancer at the pre-clinical level. There are some plans to develop the vaccine for clinical use and for cancer patients.

Sipuleucel-T (Provenge™) is the first cancer vaccine licensed last year that used for prostate cancer patients irresponsive to hormone treatment. But, unfortunately this vaccine only improves survival by an average of 4.1 months.

Vaccines for contagious diseases are impressive at generating immune results that stop infection with bacteria or viruses. The immune system is also able to protect us against tumors and then in theory a vaccine approach ought to be effective against cancer.

In practice this owns proven very challenging because unlike spreadable diseases, tumors are obtained from normal human cells, and never made up of foreign chemicals or antigens capable of triggering an immune response.

Professor Mills' group has formed a novel vaccine and immunotherapeutic method that can beat these obstacles and actually has the potential to substantially improve on existent technologies.