Now, there is a new hope for cancer patients. It is a new vaccine that reprograms adult cells to act as embryonic stem cells (ESCs). The way it works is to inject the patient with these reprogrammed cells to trigger an immune response that ends up with the body’s immune system rejecting cancer cells, which is possible since the reprogrammed cells share proteins with the cancer cells.
The idea behind this therapy is to create a cancer-specific antigen receptor and couple this to an effector cell (iPSCs), now, the problem is that it's necessary to identify new tumor-specific antigens, but large numbers of tumor antigens are possibly still unknown.
Nevertheless, it is still very interesting and I think it’s putting medicine in the right direction since chemotherapy has shown not to be very effective and downgrades the person quality of life greatly.
Here is the interview with Joseph C. Wu MD, Ph.D., director of Standford Cardiovascular Institute and author of this study.
ResearchGate: What are induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and how are they typically used?
Joseph Wu: iPSCs are created by reprogramming the nucleus of an adult somatic cell, like a skin cell or blood cell, to express similar genes as embryonic stem cells. By doing so, the adult somatic cell actually transforms into a cell that is similar to embryonic stem cells. These can then be differentiated into a large number of other cell types in the human body, like heart muscle cells, nerve cells, pancreatic cells, liver cells, etc. The main applications of these cells include understanding disease mechanism, drug discovery, and regenerative medicine.
RG: How did you use them in your study?
Wu: In our study, we use the iPSCs in combination with an immunostimulant agent to create a vaccine to activate the immune system to target the proteins on iPSCs. The rationale behind the vaccine is the overlap in proteins that are present in both cancer cells, and iPSCs. So when you activate the immune system to target the proteins on the iPSCs, it makes them also attack the cancer cells that have the same set of proteins.
RG: What were the results?
Wu: For all cancers, the treatment worked very well. For breast cancer, for instance, it resulted in the complete rejection of cancer in 70 percent of the mice. Even with a large number of cancer cells we injected, the mice’s immune systems were able to fully reject or severely reduce tumors. For a very aggressive melanoma (skin cancer), it resulted in a significant reduction of tumor sizes. It might have resulted in complete rejection down the line in some of the treated mice, but the control mice had such big tumors that we had to stop the experiment after two weeks.
RG: Do you think it would work with other types of cancer too?
Wu: We tested for skin cancer (melanoma), breast cancer, and lung cancer (mesothelioma). And yes, we believe that because of the large number of cancer-related proteins that are present on the iPSCs, this vaccine will also work on other cancers.
RG: How big of a step is this towards a cancer vaccine for humans?
Wu: We feel that this has great potential as a possible vaccine. For example, patients could be vaccinated at a certain age—say at 70—to boost their immune system to target possible cancerous cells, and limit cancer from growing out. As a next step, we are currently setting up and performing in vitro experiments to validate the efficacy and safety of the vaccine on human samples.
Joseph Wu: iPSCs are created by reprogramming the nucleus of an adult somatic cell, like a skin cell or blood cell, to express similar genes as embryonic stem cells. By doing so, the adult somatic cell actually transforms into a cell that is similar to embryonic stem cells. These can then be differentiated into a large number of other cell types in the human body, like heart muscle cells, nerve cells, pancreatic cells, liver cells, etc. The main applications of these cells include understanding disease mechanism, drug discovery, and regenerative medicine.
RG: How did you use them in your study?
Wu: In our study, we use the iPSCs in combination with an immunostimulant agent to create a vaccine to activate the immune system to target the proteins on iPSCs. The rationale behind the vaccine is the overlap in proteins that are present in both cancer cells, and iPSCs. So when you activate the immune system to target the proteins on the iPSCs, it makes them also attack the cancer cells that have the same set of proteins.
RG: What were the results?
Wu: For all cancers, the treatment worked very well. For breast cancer, for instance, it resulted in the complete rejection of cancer in 70 percent of the mice. Even with a large number of cancer cells we injected, the mice’s immune systems were able to fully reject or severely reduce tumors. For a very aggressive melanoma (skin cancer), it resulted in a significant reduction of tumor sizes. It might have resulted in complete rejection down the line in some of the treated mice, but the control mice had such big tumors that we had to stop the experiment after two weeks.
RG: Do you think it would work with other types of cancer too?
Wu: We tested for skin cancer (melanoma), breast cancer, and lung cancer (mesothelioma). And yes, we believe that because of the large number of cancer-related proteins that are present on the iPSCs, this vaccine will also work on other cancers.
RG: How big of a step is this towards a cancer vaccine for humans?
Wu: We feel that this has great potential as a possible vaccine. For example, patients could be vaccinated at a certain age—say at 70—to boost their immune system to target possible cancerous cells, and limit cancer from growing out. As a next step, we are currently setting up and performing in vitro experiments to validate the efficacy and safety of the vaccine on human samples.
Currently, this vaccine against cancer has not reached the clinical trial stage, but the results observed in mice are very positive and I think that we will see the cure for cancer in the near future.
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