Researchers from the University of Georgia and Arizona's Mayo Clinic have developed a vaccine capable of reducing breast cancer tumors and pancreatic cancer in mice, according to a study released today.
According to Geert-Jan Boons said chemistry professor and researcher at the Cancer Center University of Georgia and author of the study, the vaccine elicits an immune response "very strong", which activates the immune system and reduce the size of an average tumor 80 percent.
The vaccine, which teaches the immune system to fight tumors in MUC1 protein levels, common in the carcinogenic process, described this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Boons shown "cautiously optimistic" because sometimes the results in mice do not work the same in humans, but is confident that such vaccines may have an important role in the treatment of cancer.
Scientists explain that when cells become cancerous, the sugar in their surface proteins undergo different changes that differentiate them from healthy cells.
For decades they have tried to activate the immune system to recognize these differences and destroy cancer cells without attacking normal. The problem is that as the cancer cells originate in the body, the immune system does not recognize as foreign and therefore does not initiate the attack.
But "we are beginning to have therapies that can teach our immune system how to combat the unique features found only in cancer cells," said Boons, which, combined with early diagnosis expected to help the cancer at a later stage disease can be controlled.
To perform the experiment, the researchers used genetically modified mice developed by Professor of Therapeutic Research Center for Cancer Research at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, Sandra Gendler, and coauthor of the study.
Like humans, mice overexpressing tumors develop on the surface of their cells MUC1, a protein found in more than 70 percent of all fatal cancers, including breast, pancreas and ovary.
Previous studies have shown that high levels of this protein, which is common in tumor processes have a key role in the ability of cancer cells to resist the action of anti-cancer drugs used, for example, chemotherapy.
In fact, this protein is present in 90 percent of cancers called "triple negative", which do not respond to standard hormone treatments. U.S. only there are 35,000 patients diagnosed each year with triple negative tumors.
So create a tool that allows the body to recognize the MUC1 protein produced by the tumor itself and reacting to it, it is essential for some types of cancer that can not be operated.
Gendler emphasized that this is the first time a vaccine has the immune system identify and kill cancer cells as a function of certain proteins and hope to begin clinical trials in late 2013.