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German Research Team Develops Vaccine Against Cancer PARIS (AFP) - Innovative treatment of metastasized kidney cancer using a vaccine to stimulate the body's immune system has resulted in complete remission in four of 17 patients tested, the magazine Nature Medicine said in its March edition. The report from a team led by Alexander Kugler at the University of Gottingen in Germany said the experimental vaccine had reduced tumor mass by more than 50% in two other cases. The results were obtained with a vaccine created through the electrical fusion of tumor cells from the patient and so-called dendritic immune cells from a donor. The individualized treatment held promise for treatment of several other forms of cancer, the article said. "If confirmed, the results of this study represent an unprecedented advance in the selective and non-toxic immunotherapy of a disseminated and lethal carcinoma," wrote Harvard Medical School's Donald Kufe in a review of the findings. Response rates to chemotherapeutic or hormonal treatments are less than 10%, with regression having been demonstrated in only a minority of patients treated with interferons or interleukin-2, he added. The vaccine caused only mild, passing fever and pain at sites where the cancer had spread, as opposed to the side effects of other treatments, such as severe pain and hair loss. In the most successful cases, three patients rejected all metastases, or spread of the disease, within the first 12 weeks with a total of two injections. They "remained free of any detectable tumor lesions for up to 21 months," Kugler's findings reported. "Typically, the reduction of the tumor mass occurred within the first weeks after the first immunization," they added. "The findings should provide the impetus for assessing
effectiveness of fusion cell vaccines in the treatment of other tumors,"
Kufe predicted. The treatment "could contribute to fulfilling the promise
that ... has been anticipated from the success of vaccines against
smallpox, polio and other infectious diseases," he
concluded.
Newswires |
