Vaccine factory: Genes specific to a patient's tumour are injected into a virus which naturally attacks tobacco plants. This virus is scratched onto the leaves of a tobacco plant which then becomes a production factory for the vaccine.
Credit: Wikimedia
CHICAGO: Researchers have developed a plant-based cancer vaccine capable of kick-starting the body's immune response and tailored to a patient's specific tumour type.
While they have not yet determined whether the immune response is sufficient to destroy the cancer, the researchers are hopeful that the technique could one day lead to a cure for at lease some types of the deadly disease.
"Marshal the immune system"
The process has already successfully cured cancer in mice.
"This would be a way to treat cancer without side effects," said lead author Ronald Levy of the Stanford University Medical Centre, in California, USA.
"The idea is to marshal the body's own immune system to fight cancer," Levy said, adding that he's optimistic he'll get positive results from the next clinical trial. "We know that if you get the immune system revved up, it can attack and kill cancer," he said.
Levy's team tested the vaccine on 16 patients who were recently diagnosed with follicular B-cell lymphoma, a chronic, incurable disease.
None of the patients experienced any significant side-effects and more than 70 per cent of the patients developed an immune response, the study published today in the U.S. journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found.
Many advantages
This is the first time a plant-based cancer vaccine has been tested on humans. There have been a few trials of cancer vaccines developed with animal or human cells but the results have been mixed.
The plant-based vaccine has a number of advantages over animal-based versions. It can be developed much more quickly and at far less expense. It does not carry as much risk of infection should the animal cells be contaminated. And the antibodies produced may also spark a stronger immune response than those developed in mammalian cells.
"Every lymphoma patient has a target on their tumour cells but each patient's tumour has a different version of that target," Levy said in a telephone interview. Finding the right target requires cloning the genes from the patient's tumour.
Those genes are then injected into a virus which naturally attacks tobacco plants. This virus is scratched onto the leaves of a tobacco plant and it becomes a "protein production factor," Levy said.
Vaccine enhances cancer immune response
This is quite interesting. This type of treatment might replace the outdated, costly and 'medieval' chemotherapy and radiation treatments currently being used to treat cancer. Enhancing the body's own immune response is a better way to fight cancer.
It is sweetly ironic that the tobacco plant is being used to manufacture the vaccine, since tobacco products contribute so much towards the development of some cancers.
The only problem I see is that it might not be accepted by mainstream medicine because if the vaccine treatment is effective yet relatively inexpensive, there is not a big profit to be made. Some pharmaceutical companies may fight a cheaper solution to the chemotherapy drugs they currently produce and sell.
Daniel
South Africa
Yes, very interesting!
I agree with you Daniel, on pretty nearly every point. I think, though, that (1) if the treatment works (and it is bound to eventually), and (2) the news is spread the way it ought to be, immune system stimulation will eventually become standard medicine. Yes, the treatment is so simple that our profit making drug companies are likely to oppose further development of it--preferring the immense profits of chemo treatements and others which are so expensive and destructive to the body and its natural defenses. But I think the public will be increasingly able to fight the bad ethics of large companies. The ability of corporations to make profit at all has weakened immensely, and this will enable the balance of power to continue changing in favor of the public. That is a long story, though, and I hope you will look it up in articles in The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.
Arnold Perey, PhD
A New Perspective for Anthropology and Sociology