Josh: I’ve been waiting for a study such as this to come out. We will never be able to successfully fight off cancer with drugs alone. Cancer is a normal part of life; many cells in each of our bodies are cancerous, but our immune systems successfully destroy them. When people are actually diagnosed with cancer, the immune system for some reason stopped recognizing the cells as cancerous. This technique basically fixes that, allowing the body to fight it off. I’m not surprised in the slightest that all traces of cancer were gone.

The next step is to try this in humans, probably just testing the immune response first, then introducing it to some cancer patients. I see no reason why this can’t be applied to all other types of cancer, as long as they have some type of unique, recognizable receptor or surface marker.

Perhaps I’m just an optimist, but I’m holding out hope that this is the beginning of the end of the search for a cure to cancer.

Researchers at Wayne State University have tested a breast cancer vaccine they say completely eliminated HER2-positive tumors in mice - even cancers resistant to current anti-HER2 therapy - without any toxicity.

The study, reported in the September 15 issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, suggests the vaccine could treat women with HER2-positive, treatment-resistant cancer or help prevent cancer recurrence. The researchers also say it might potentially be used in cancer-free women to prevent initial development of these tumors.

HER2 receptors promote normal cell growth, and are found in low amounts on normal breast cells. But HER2-positive breast cells can contain many more receptors than is typical, promoting a particularly aggressive type of tumor that affects 20 to 30 percent of all breast cancer patients. Therapies such as trastuzumab and lapatinib, designed to latch on to these receptors and destroy them, are a mainstay of treatment for this cancer, but a significant proportion of patients develop a resistance to them or cancer metastasis that is hard to treat.

This treatment relied on activated, own-immunity to wipe out the cancer, says the study’s lead investigator, Wei-Zen Wei, Ph.D., a professor of immunology and microbiology at the Karmanos Cancer Institute.

“The immune response against HER2-positive receptors we saw in this study is powerful, and works even in tumors that are resistant to current therapies,” she said. “The vaccine could potentially eliminate the need to even use these therapies.”

The vaccine consists of “naked” DNA – genes that produce the HER2 receptor – as well as an immune stimulant. Both are housed within an inert bacterial plasmid. In this study, the researchers used pulses of electricity to deliver the injected vaccine into leg muscles in mice, where the gene produced a huge quantity of HER2 receptors that activated both antibodies and killer T cells.

“While HER2 receptors are not usually seen by the immune system when they are expressed at low level on the surface of normal cells, a sudden flood of receptors alerts the body to an invasion that needs to be eliminated,” Wei said. “During that process, the immune system learns to attack cancer cells that display large numbers of these receptors.”

They also used an agent that, for a while, suppressed the activity of regulatory T cells, which normally keeps the immune system from over-reacting. In the absence of regulatory T cells, the immune system responded much more strongly to the vaccine. Then, when the researchers implanted HER2-positive breast tumors in the animals, the cancer was eradicated.

“Both tumor cells that respond to current targeted therapies and those that are resistant to these treatments were eradicated,” Wei said. “This may be an answer for women with these tumors who become resistant to the current therapies.”

Wei’s lab is the first to develop HER2 DNA vaccines, and this is the second such vaccine Wei and her colleagues have tested more extensively. The first, described in a study in 1999, formed the model of a vaccine now being tested by a major Pharmaceutical company in early phase clinical trials in the U.S. and in Europe in women with HER2-positive breast cancer.

In order to ensure complete safety, Wei says the current test vaccine uses HER2 genes that are altered so that they cannot be oncogenic. The receptors produced do not contain an “intracellular domain” – the part of the receptor that is located just below the cell surface and transmits growth signals to the nucleus. The first vaccine was also safe, she says, but contained a little more of the native HER2 receptor structure. “With this vaccine, I am quite certain the receptor is functionally dead,” she said.

“The greatest power of vaccination is protection against initial cancer development, and that is our ultimate goal with this treatment,” Wei said.

Source: American Association for Cancer Research

DNA Vaccination Controls Her-2+ Tumors that Are Refractory to Targeted Therapies. Paula J. Whittington, Marie P. Piechocki, Henry H. Heng, Jennifer B. Jacob, Richard F. Jones, Jessica B. Back, and Wei-Zen Wei. Cancer Res 2008 68: 7502-7511. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-08-1489

La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology (LIAI) scientists have discovered one for the textbooks. Their finding, reported Friday in the scientific journal Immunity, illuminates a new, previously unknown mechanism in how the body fights a virus. The finding runs counter to traditional scientific understanding of this process and will provide scientists a more effective method for developing vaccines.

“Our research grew from the question, “why do you get good antibody responses to some parts of (virus) pathogens and poor responses to other parts?” said LIAI scientist Shane Crotty, Ph.D., the lead researcher on the paper, “Selective CD4 T cell help for antibody responses to a large viral pathogen: deterministic linkage of specificities.” Alessandro Sette, Ph.D., a renowned vaccine expert and director of the LIAI Center for Infectious Disease, also was a key contributor on the study. Dr. Crotty said the team studied the smallpox vaccine, considered the “gold standard” of vaccines, and found some startling answers.

“We expected one thing based on textbook knowledge and that didn’t happen at all,” he said. It was known previously that getting a good antibody response requires two different cells of the immune system — B cells and CD4 T cells, both soldiers in the immune system’s defensive army. Antibody responses are important because they help the body fight off viruses and they also are key to vaccine development. Surprisingly, however, Dr. Crotty said the researchers found that B cells and CD4 T cells recognize the same piece of the virus.

“Previously, it was thought that the CD4 T cell could react to any part of the virus, but now we realize it must be specific to the same part as the B cell,” he explained. “When you have a hundred different parts, this knowledge makes a big difference. It narrows down the search for the right antigens tremendously.”

Scientists use knowledge of which antigens (virus pieces) trigger an antibody attack to develop vaccines. Vaccines work by exposing the individual to a milder form of a particular virus, so that the body makes antibodies to fight off the virus. Consequently, if the individual is later exposed to the actual virus, the body already has an army of antibodies built up that can fight off this stronger viral attack before it can overtake the body and cause sickness.

With the knowledge gained from the LIAI study, scientists will now be able to more easily figure out the most important viral pieces to focus on in developing a vaccine. “The fact that it requires two components to fight the (virus) pathogen is important to understand,” Dr. Crotty said. “So now when we find out which viral pieces are producing a strong response from the B cells, we can cross check that against the viral pieces eliciting a good response from the CD4 T cells. The point at which these virus pieces cross – in other words where the same piece is eliciting a response from both the B cells and CD4 T cells – then we know we have found our best candidate for creating a vaccine.”

Source: La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology

Selective CD4+ T Cell Help for Antibody Responses to a Large Viral Pathogen: Deterministic Linkage of Specificities. Alessandro Sette, Magdalini Moutaftsi, Juan Moyron-Quiroz, Megan M. McCausland, D. Huw Davies, Robert J. Johnston, Bjoern Peters, Mohammed Rafii-El-Idrissi Benhnia, Julia Hoffmann, Hua-Poo Su, Kavita Singh, David N. Garboczi, Steven Head, Howard Grey, Philip L. Felgner, and Shane Crotty. Immunity. June, 2008: 28 (6).

Josh says:

It’s too bad this probably won’t help that much with developing an HIV vaccine, since the virus mutates so quickly. Though, there have been reported cases of humans developing antibodies specific to the part of the virus that binds to the CD4 receptors, which can’t mutate.