By: Zoe Chen
Scientists have invented antidotes for many diseases and sicknesses, but they have always been dumbfounded when it comes to cancer. The reason for this insufficiency is that people have different variations of cancer because they have different genes. At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. Catherine Wu and her team strive to create cancer vaccines designed specific for each person.
Dr. Wu’s research is mainly focused on using the power of the body’s immune system to fight against cancer cells. She had this idea when she watched how a bone marrow transplant helped patients suffering from leukemia to reset their immune systems and fight the disease.
“There in front of my eyes were people who are being cured of their leukemia because of the mobilization of the immune response,” she said.
The researcher wondered if vaccines created using someone’s cancer characteristics could stimulate their immune system to attack the diseased cells more effectively.
So, how does this personalized cancer vaccine work? Well first, cancer cells from a patient are killed, and sometimes broken down. Then, dead cancer cells, or parts of the dead cancer cells are then combined with adjuvant to create a vaccine. When injected into a person’s body, the vaccine stimulates the immune system to respond to antigens. Smart, right?
For their first experiment, Dr. Wu and her team selected six people with advanced melanoma, which is a type of skin cancer. They began by studying their cancer characteristics. Then, they created personalized vaccines containing each patients’ unique proteins. These vaccines were designed to train the patients’ immune systems to recognize and kill cancer cells while not harming the healthy cells.
In 2015, all of these patients were given a seven-shot course of their personalized vaccines. In 2017, four patients showed no more signs of cancer recurrence. However, the tumors did reappear for the two patients with the most advanced cancer. But by 2021, even those tumors disappeared after the two patients received four more doses of the customized vaccine. All of these patients were declared cancer-free in 2021.
Even though this experiment was only tested on 6 people, Dr. Wu’s research shows that these new customized vaccines can effectively battle cancer. Her work has earned her the Sjöberg Prize which comes with one million dollars as award money and $900,000 for future cancer research.