PITTSBURGH, March 30 -- Like a good coach who reviews game tapes and learns the opponent's weaknesses then chooses the best plays and utilizes the most talented players, University of Pittsburgh researchers have studied the immune response to tumor cells and mapped out a simple yet effective strategy to rally the immune system to recognize and destroy established tumors and prevent future tumors from developing.
In a study published as a "Cutting Edge" article in the April 1 Journal of Immunology, Pitt researchers exposed dendritic cells (DC's) to melanoma or lung carcinoma cells for a short period of time to create a cancer vaccine that effectively prevented tumor development in healthy mice and reduced tumors in 80 percent of mice with established tumors, significantly prolonging their survival.
"Not only is this approach simple, but also it appears to be relatively effective, which suggests that this model could potentially be adapted for use in the clinical setting to treat patients," commented Louis D. Falo, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of dermatology, vice chairman of dermatology at Pitt and member of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI). "Using tumor cells taken from patients, we may be able to create a vaccine specific for each individual. So instead of relying on a generic vaccine, we could tailor a vaccine to attack unique features of each patient's tumor."
Previous approaches to tumor vaccination have required that researchers identify and isolate antigens from cancer cells and then develop ways to introduce them to a patient to stimulate an immune response. Because identifying and obtaining tumor antigens is such a difficult task, most cancer vaccine efforts have used the few antigens which already have been identified.
"It has not yet been possible to make "customized" therapeutic vaccines
for individual cancer patient
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Contact: Amy Kemp
kempam@a1.isd.upmc.edu
(412) 624-2607
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
30-Mar-1998