Cancer vaccines may be on the verge of wider use

By Mark Roth

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In order for cancer to occur there must be some failure of the immune system. As tumors grow and multiply they evade our immune system. Many scientists in universities and companies around the world believe we may be on the verge of developing a vaccine to vaccinate people against cancer. Some of the cancer vaccines being developed include sipuleucel-T, a vaccine against advanced prostate cancer, and stimuvax, a cancer marker known as MUC1 that is present in many different tumors.

Dr. Olivera Finn, UPMC researcher, has developed her own vaccine against MUC1 that has shown some success in advanced cancer patients. She tried her vaccine in mice bread to have IBS that leads to colon cancer 80% of the time. The mice that receive the MUC1 targeted vaccine were far less likely to get IBD and almost none got cancer. Dr. Finn has also tested her vaccine in people with precancerous polyps to see if the vaccine is able to prevent colorectal cancer and is likely a few years away from reporting her results.. She states the hope is that “… the cells that become abnormal might actually be eliminated by a strong immune response.””

Neurosurgeon Hideho Okada is trialing an immune system booster called Hitonol, which would be the first vaccine developed for low-grade gliomas. He hopes this vaccine can reverse the death sentence” that comes with a diagnosis of glioma. Hitonol, named for co-inventor Hilton Levy, mimics the DNA of a virus and primes the immune system. It is currently being used in twelve different vaccine trials.

According to Robert Kirkmann, president of Oncothyreon, (company that manufactured stimuvax), the best way to test the cancer vaccines may be on large groups of patients who aren’t sick and can be followed for a long period of time. This would undoubtedly be very expensive. This type of work is typically easier done if the product is commercially produced. Dr. Gulley of the National Cancer Institute believes cancer vaccines take longer than other kinds of therapies to show beneficial results because of the amount of time it takes the immune system to evolve.

This is exciting news in the road to a “cure for cancer”. If nothing else, these vaccines may make it possible for people to live longer with cancer or make certain types of cancer less aggressive and less life-threatening.