Some great work by researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine. A new cancer vaccine totally eliminates 97% of mice tumors.
Physical tumors were injected with tiny amounts of two immune-stimulating agents by researchers.
Per Stanford.edu:
Injecting minute amounts of two immune-stimulating agents directly into solid tumors in mice can eliminate all traces of cancer in the animals, including distant, untreated metastases, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
The approach works for many different types of cancers, including those that arise spontaneously, the study found.
The researchers believe the local application of very small amounts of the agents could serve as a rapid and relatively inexpensive cancer therapy that is unlikely to cause the adverse side effects often seen with bodywide immune stimulation.
Lymphoma patients are already being recruited for a clinical trial to test the new two-agent vaccine.
The current clinical trial is expected to recruit about 15 patients with low-grade lymphoma. If successful, Levy believes the treatment could be useful for many tumor types. He envisions a future in which clinicians inject the two agents into solid tumors in humans prior to surgical removal of the cancer as a way to prevent recurrence due to unidentified metastases or lingering cancer cells, or even to head off the development of future tumors that arise due to genetic mutations like BRCA1 and 2.
Ronald Levy, MD
Photo credit: Stanford University
Ronald Levy, MD is extremely respected in the field of cancer immunotherapy. This is great news and it's exciting to see how the clinical trial goes.
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