Skip to main content

Personalized cancer vaccine clinical trial to expand following promising early results

-

 

Personalized cancer vaccine clinical trial to expand following promising early results




A clinical trial at the University of Arizona Health Sciences designed to study the safety and effectiveness of a personalized cancer vaccine combined with the immunotherapy drug Pembrolizumab will expand its cohort after promising preliminary data were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer.

Julie E. Bauman, MD, MPH, deputy director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center and a professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the Arizona College of Medicine -- Tucson, presented preliminary data on the first 10 patients with head and neck cancer, seven of which were treated at Banner -- University Medicine, the clinical partner for the Arizona Cancer Center. Five of the 10 patients experienced a clinical response to the personalized cancer vaccine, and two patients had a complete response after the treatment (no detectable disease present).

The preliminary response rate of 50% is notable when compared to patients in clinical trials that receive Pembrolizumab immunotherapy alone without the personalized cancer vaccine. In those studies, the reported response rate is approximately 15%.

The Arizona Cancer Center is one of several sites where patients were recruited to participate in phase I clinical trials sponsored by Moderna, Inc. The trial is studying the use of a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine combined with Pembrolizumab for patients with multiple cancer types, including colorectal and head and neck cancers. No clinical responses were noted for the study's cohort of 17 microsatellite stable (MSS) colorectal patients.

Dr. Bauman says the current study will now expand to 40 patients with head and neck cancer.

"The data are preliminary, and the sample size is small, but it is promising," Dr. Bauman said. "A phase I trial is about safety first and foremost, and we now know this treatment is safe and tolerable. We also have a strong signal to point us to further study this in head and neck cancer. That is why we are excited to expand this trial."

Personalized cancer vaccines are an emerging treatment option that uses a patient's own cancer cells to develop a vaccine intended to teach their immune system how to recognize and destroy their cancer. Cancer cells have DNA mutations that differ from the DNA in normal, healthy cells. These mutations are different from patient to patient, which is where the concept of a personalized vaccine is developed. Combining the personalized vaccine with Pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy medicine that works with the immune system to fight certain types of cancers, will hopefully allow patients' further benefit than pembrolizumab alone.

To identify the patient-specific mutations of cancer, mutated DNA from the patient's tumor is simultaneously sequenced with healthy DNA from the patient's blood. Computers compare the two DNA samples to identify the unique cancer mutations. The results are used to develop a set of genetic instructions loaded onto a single molecule of messenger RNA (mRNA) and made into a vaccine. These instructions teach immune cells such as T-cells -- white blood cells that help protect against infection -- identify and attack the mutated cancer cells.

"Our goal is to understand how we can get better at applying this treatment to more patients to result in more successful outcomes," Dr. Bauman said. "This preliminary data has generated exciting new hypotheses to investigate."




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

B12 MAY HELP PREVENT ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE.

-
Image
  B12 MAY HELP PREVENT ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE. Worms don't wiggle when they have Alzheimer's disease. Yet something helped worms with the disease hold onto their wiggle in Professor Jessica Tanis's lab at the University of Delaware. In solving the mystery, Tanis and her team have yielded new clues into the potential impact of diet on Alzheimer's, the dreaded degenerative brain disease afflicting more than 6 million Americans. A few years ago, Tanis and her team began investigating factors affecting the onset and progression of Alzheimer's disease. They were doing genetic research with  C. elegans , a tiny soil-dwelling worm subject of numerous studies. Expression of amyloid-beta, a toxic protein implicated in Alzheimer's disease, paralyzes worms within 36 hours of reaching adulthood. While the worms in one petri dish in Tanis's lab were rendered completely immobile, the worms of the same age in the adjacent petri dish still had their wiggle, documented as ...
Read more

EXTREME HEAT MAY NEGATIVELY IMPACT COGNITIVE HEALTH

-
Image
  EXTREME HEAT MAY NEGATIVELY IMPACT COGNITIVE HEALTH          July 2023 was the hottest month, with cities like Phoenix experiencing record-breaking heat waves for weeks. A new study finds that ongoing extreme heat can worsen cognitive decline among vulnerable groups -- particularly Black older adults and those living in poor neighborhoods. "Our research finds that cumulative exposure to extreme heat can undermine cognitive health, but it does so unequally across the population," said Eunyoung Choi, a postdoctoral associate at the NYU School of Global Public Health and the first author of the study, published in the  Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health . Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S., claiming more lives each year than hurricanes, tornadoes, and lightning combined. Young children and older adults are particularly vulnerable to heat-related illnesses such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Recent stud...
Read more

Diabetes drugs may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.

-
Image
    Diabetes drugs may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. The study finds people taking the drugs have fewer biomarkers, slower cognitive decline. People taking certain drugs to lower blood sugar for type 2 diabetes had less amyloid in the brain, a biomarker of Alzheimer's disease compared to people with type 2 diabetes who are not taking the drugs and those without diabetes. The new study, published in the August 11, 2021, online issue of  Neurology , the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, also found people taking these drugs, called dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors, showed slower cognitive decline than people in the other two groups. In people with type 2 diabetes, the body no longer efficiently uses insulin to control blood sugar. Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors, also known as gliptins, can be prescribed when other diabetes drugs do not work. They help control blood sugar when combined with diet and exercise. "People with diabetes have been shown to ...
Read more