New Treatment Ahead: A Cancer Vaccine
The trouble with cancer is that the body doesn’t recognize cancerous cells for what they are — disease entities that should be attacked and killed — as it does with so many other threats to our health. Cancer cells become quite adept at “escaping” the surveillance system that triggers our natural defense mechanisms.
What if there was a vaccine that could be injected into the body, that would travel through the bloodstream to the site of the cancerous cells and destroy them?
And what if there was a vaccine that could be injected as a
preventive measure, to protect the body from developing a particular type of cancer?
Cancer is the second-leading cause of death and is responsible for one of every four deaths in the United States. In 2004, more than 560,000 Americans – or more than 1,500 people a day – died of cancer. Of those annual cancer deaths, about 1,300 occurred in North Dakota. About 1.4 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed nationally in 2004. This figure includes 3,250 new cases in North Dakota. |
These questions are at the heart of preliminary studies at the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences, in its Department of Surgery, where researchers are using mice to find more effective treatments for cancer in humans. Their work is focused on colorectal cancer, the second most common cause of cancer-related death in
the United States.
“The incidence of colorectal cancer is expected to increase as the age of the U.S. population increases,” said Robert Sticca, M.D., chair and professor of surgery, Grand Forks. About 150,000 new cases are reported each year, and the disease accounts for 50,000 to 60,000 deaths annually in this country.
The only surgical oncologist in North Dakota, Sticca has a special interest in gastrointestinal cancers and melanoma.
“In North Dakota colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related death,” he said, “with 34 percent of patients diagnosed eventually succumbing to their disease.”
Although significant strides have been made with traditional therapies such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, in many cases the disease recurs and progresses causing the eventual demise of the patient.
“New therapies are needed,” he said. “Immunotherapy has emerged as an attractive alternative therapy in many types of cancer, allowing the patient to avoid the serious, often debilitating side effects (sickness, nausea, hair loss) of traditional methods of treatment.” Studies have demonstrated that this type of therapy can be undertaken with little or no toxicity.
Immunotherapeutic research involving patients has shown some promising results, said Sticca, who led clinical studies in South Carolina prior to joining the UND medical school in 2003.
“In my former lab (at Greenville, SC), we were looking at kidney cancer and melanoma,” he said. “We had moderate successes with this type of treatment (for patients). My feeling, when I came here, was that this work could be extrapolated to other cancers.”
At UND, his research is aimed at creating a vaccine that “reprograms” the body’s immune system to recognize and eradicate malignant cells, without harming healthy ones.
“We’ve had some very good successes, in experiments with mice, that have been very encouraging,” he said. “We’re working now to determine the correct amount and timing of dosages and the optimal conditions for the vaccination in generating the immune response. We’re fine-tuning the whole vaccination process to either prevent the mice from getting tumors or injecting them after they have the cancer.”
“We are optimistic that, within a year or so, we will be able to begin a clinical trial in humans,” he said. “This could be something that’s very important” for these cancers and others affecting the breast, lung and prostate.
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