A new vaccine approach has proven effective in helping the immune system recognize cancer cells in the blood and trigger a response.
- A team of scientists has developed a new method to develop vaccines that could increase the effectiveness of immunotherapies to treat acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and potentially other blood cancers.
- While, “from an immune point of view, cancer can often appear as healthy tissue, so the immune system does not always initiate a response against the tumor”, the new vaccine method makes it possible to label cells cancers to facilitate immune recognition and response.
- “As this vaccine approach does not target any specific cancer protein”, it could well be applied equally effectively to other blood cancers, according to the researchers.
“Our immune system protects us against pathogens, but also against any abnormal changes that occur in the body. For example, immune cells can identify abnormal mutated proteins or cancer cells and eliminate them from the system. Vaccination appears thus as a powerful tool to harness the immune system and treat cancers.”
A team of scientists has developed a new method to develop vaccines that could increase the effectiveness of immunotherapies to treat acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and potentially other blood cancers. His work was published in the journal Blood Advances.
Make the tumor recognizable by the immune system
Some vaccines work by preventing the development of specific cancers, such as the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which can cause cervical cancer. Other vaccines, called therapeutic, consist of inducing an immune response when this is lacking in the patient with cancer. It is a vaccine of this type that researchers from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineeringat the University of Chicago (United States).
“From an immune perspective, cancer can often appear exactly like healthy tissue, so the immune system does not always initiate a response against the tumor”can we read in a communicated. The whole challenge is therefore to make the tumor “recognizable” by the immune system.
A vaccine that “label” cancer cells to trigger immunity
This is what the researchers succeeded in doing by taking advantage of a unique characteristic of cancer cells: the presence of “unpaired cysteine molecules on their surfaces”, which can be harnessed to help the immune system target cancer. The vaccine they designed, injected directly into the blood, makes it possible to “mark” these tumor cells. “It is a way to label cancer cells or their debris in the blood to facilitate recognition and trigger the immune response.”
Note that, to generate a more effective response, scientists combined the administration of the vaccine with a chemotherapy drug called cytarabine, commonly used in patients with AML. They found that the dual treatment had “significantly increased the survival rate” sick people. And, “as this vaccine approach does not target any specific cancer protein”, it could well be applied equally effectively to other blood cancers, conclude the authors of the study. A hope for the tens of thousands of new patients who, each year in France, are affected by hematological cancers.
