Over the past five years, Dr. Johannes Vieweg and fellow immunotherapy researchers have witnessed a fledgling prostate cancer vaccine become a clinical trial with recent, very positive patient responses: vaccine acceptance and a decrease in tumor growth rate.
Thirteen patients in the advanced stages of prostate cancer have been involved in the trial over the past year. The patients are injected with a certain type of cell--known as dendritic cells--from their own bodies in an attempt to combat the cancer. These cells are first cultured for seven days outside the patient's body and at the same time re-coded with the patient's RNA to provide genetic information about the tumor cells.
Once the dendritic cells are reintroduced into the patient's body, they stimulate an increase in the patient's T-cells, or "killer" cells, which then target and destroy the tumor.
"[The prostate cancer vaccine] is a very specific approach versus traditional cancer treatment methods, such as chemotherapy," said Vieweg, assistant professor of urology at the Medical Center and lead author of the study.
A particularly positive result of this approach is that the vaccine does not have serious side-effects, in contrast to the often severe side-effects of chemotherapy. Chemotherapy, radiation therapy and other current treatments take a shotgun approach; although many cancer cells are eradicated from the body, many healthy cells are also destroyed in the process due to debilitating radiation or medicine.
The Phase 1 clinical trial judged the patient's physical response to the cell injection, which proved quite positive. The patient's cells come from his own body, so there is no risk that the body will reject them and induce severe side-effects. Although most patients did experience low-grade fever, Vieweg reported that there was "nothing life-threatening, or any serious toxicity at all."
Further results of the prostate cancer vaccine have encouraged Vieweg. Not only did the patients show positive physical responses, but there were also strong indications of a slowdown in the tumor growth rate, Vieweg said.
Dr. Zhen Su, a research associate who is also in the Division of Urology and specializes in cellular immunotherapy, expressed considerable hope for the study.
"If you administered [the vaccine] to patients in the earlier stages of cancer, it has the potential to be even more effective," Su said.
But the vaccine is still in its early developmental stages, which means that it will be quite some time, maybe five to 10 years, until it can be introduced on a larger scale in cancer treatment methods.
Both Vieweg and Su emphasized the amount of time and effort this vaccine required for development and testing, but both seemed quite hopeful about future cancer treatment possibilities.
"I think this is a huge effort. We are working for [full development], but progress is not made overnight," Vieweg said.
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