Next Cancer Cure: New 'vaccine' holds promising future for curing cancers

Stanford researchers successfully test treatment on mice

Several Stanford researchers may have found a potential cure for cancer with a simple injection now being referred to as a "cancer vaccine."

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Stanford University of Medicine began injecting small amounts of two different immune-stimulating agents into several tumor-ridden mice. The team saw "amazing, bodywide effects" on their subjects.

The activated T cells were able to eliminate not only the injected tumor but also all identical tumors throughout the entire body, even those previously untreated. All traces of cancer were ultimately eliminated. This innovative new treatment also wasn't one cancer-specific, they found it worked for many different types of cancers.

"When we use these two agents together, we see the elimination of tumors all over the body," said Ronald Levy, MD, professor of oncology to the Stanford Medicine news center. "This approach bypasses the need to identify tumor-specific immune targets and doesn't require wholesale activation of the immune system or customization of a patient's immune cells."

The researchers hope this new form of treatment could eventually act as a "rapid and relatively inexpensive cancer therapy" that will most likely come with no adverse side effects.

One of the two injected agents have already been approved to use on humans; the other has begun testing with humans. A major clinical trial is set to begin on about 15 patients with lymphoma.

"I don't think there's a limit to the type of tumor we could potentially treat, as long as it has been infiltrated by the immune system," expressed Levy.

The results with the treated mice were very promising; 87 out of the 90 treated mice were cured of cancer. However, cancer did reoccur in three of the cured mice, but they were successfully treated a second time.

Breast cancer, colon cancer, and melanoma tumors were also tested with this treatment and successfully cured. One downfall to the treatment was if there were two different types of cancers in one mouse, the injected treatment only influenced the sites with the same cancer as the injected source.

"This is a very targeted approach," Levy said. "Only the tumor that shares the protein targets displayed by the treated site is affected. We're attacking specific targets without having to identify exactly what proteins the T cells are recognizing."

If the current human trials run successfully, Levy trusts it could be used for many tumor types in humans. 

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