Step by step, the course of some battles – which many consider lost – is being reversed. Unlike what happens in movie fights where the “hero” receives a thousand blows and suddenly turns around and wins the fight, in this fight the advances are “step by step”, but constant. We refer to confront, treat and contain or to cure cancer. Something that -decades ago- used to be synonymous with the end but now, in many cases, has another prognosis. Also, the “small step“The positive to which we refer has the distinction of being the product of a team of Argentine scientists that has been developing a possible therapeutic vaccine against the advancement of melanoma, a type of skin tumor, for almost three decades. This week, those researchers achieved another milestone: published the results of the clinical follow-up after the application of their experimental vaccine “VACCIMEL“Which is completing phase II of the investigation. According to the experts”it was observed that 50% of the patients treated with this formula relapsed at 96 months while 50% of patients treated with interferon relapsed at 13 months.”
The new data, published this week in the scientific journal “Frontiers in Immunology”, confirm the very positive results that have already been obtained since 2017. And although it is a small study in number, covering about twenty cases, the conclusions are encouraging.
“Specifically, we found that the positive differences and health benefits of patients vaccinated against melanoma progression were still maintained when compared to the use of the usual therapy, interferon, even five years after starting the treatment. treatment,” he told NEWS the doctor Joseph Mordoh, CONICET researcher, and director of the Cancer Foundation Cancer Research Center. In other words, this vaccine in development is still effective and proving to be less toxic than the most usual drug. “And its application enables metastasis-free survival in patients with melanoma who are at high risk of relapse,”
But there is another exciting factexplained Mordoh, who is also head of the Cancer Laboratory at the Leloir Institute Foundation. “We were able to determine that our treatment is compatible with so-called ‘immune checkpoint inhibitors’, which is a type of immunotherapy which, in recent years, has come getting better prognosis for these patients greatly. We saw that the combination of both treatments is safe and we think that it would enhance the immune response against this skin tumor”, she commented.
Another positive fact that stands out after analyzing the results of several clinical studies and following up thirty patients who received VACCIMEL in different clinical trials, studying them four years after vaccination, is that 75% did not present metastasis (when the tumor spreads to distant organs).
The vaccine itself is a complex product as it is based on a preparation of inactivated melanoma cells to which other compounds such as BCG and GM-CSF are added. BCG is the essence of the old tuberculosis vaccination and contributes to improving the immune response. And GM-CSF is another molecule that attracts monocytes, a key white blood cell for immunity.
When this development is approved by the ANMAT for general use in this pathology -something that those responsible for the laboratory that won the technology transfer hope will happen by the end of 2022- the therapeutic arsenal available to oncologists will be expanded to better fight advanced melanoma cases.
Although its name confuses, this vaccine is not preventive but therapy: “applying it what we achieve is stimulate the activity of a large number of lymphocytes components of our body’s immune system. It is a typical tool of “immunotherapy” that has now become one of the most promising branches in the field of oncology.”
Although for now its field of action is exclusively advanced melanoma, the plans of the laboratory led by Mordoh include starting trials to test the effectiveness of its platform against other types of cancer that also generate a high immune response. “We believe that they could work well in some types of breast cancer and also in some lung cancers,” explained the researcher.
In addition, in these years, those responsible for the laboratory also continued to improve the “base” component of the medication. “We were able to carry out genomic studies of the cell lines from which we obtained the vaccines. And, with these conclusions, we are now thinking of developing a second-generation vaccine, where the antigens that are the key to improving treatment are expressed more efficiently.” and quantity. In other words, we think it is possible to obtain a 2.0 version, which is more effective,” Mordoh hoped.
immunotherapy
As he told NEWS this researcher, “today there is growing interest throughout the world in developing this type of therapy because it is being verified that each person’s immune system has its own differences and particularities. This opens up a wide field of new therapeutic possibilities. I don’t know if will reach the level of medicine “personalized“, but yes – without a doubt – we will talk about different medicines, adjusted to “groups” of people. A medicine “groupized“. When treating people with a tumor, doctors know that there are cases in which their system works effectively against the tumor, while in others their immunity does not work quite well. “If we can determine in detail why it happens and how By making our immune system work efficiently against diseased tissues, we could take very important new steps in the control and cure of these pathologies”.
Another field in which oncology is advancing is that of being able to predict which patients will be able to benefit from these therapies and which ones will not.. Because it has been verified that in certain cases the new medications are not effective and it is not good to subject a patient to a treatment that, from before, it is known that it will not be effective and can always cause side effects.
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