- The first cases of cancer occurred thousands of years ago and to this day no cure has been designed.
- The most common types of tumors are those of the breast, lung, colon and rectum, and prostate.
- About a third of cases are due to tobacco use, a high body mass index, alcohol consumption and lack of physical activity.
Innovation within the field of health is in constant reinvention. The development of new medicines always has the purpose of fighting different diseases. Although one of the pending challenges is to create personalized cancer vaccines. Although this project seemed very far away, it could now be a reality very soon.
The disease for which there is still no cure
Although the first cases of tumors occurred thousands of years ago, currently their incidence and mortality are at their highest point. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) during 2020 it was the cause behind almost 10 million deathsthat is, almost one in six that were registered.
In this case, researchers Mayo Clinic work on the development of personalized therapeutic cancer vaccines that could attack the distinctive characteristics of the tumors in each person.
The new approach, based on advances in genomic research and data analysishas transformative potential to bolster the power of the immune system to identify and attack cancer cells.
“For some cancer patients, the vaccine may induce shrinkage of their tumors and provide long-term, durable anti-tumor immunity,” says Dr. Keith Knutson, co-director of the Immunology and Immunotherapy Program at Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center in Florida and co-creator of Mayo Clinic’s Personalized Neoantigen Vaccines Program.
Dr. Knutson indicates that personalized cancer vaccines are designed in a similar way to those created against influenza or COVID-19, in which the key ingredient is a specific disease-related protein.
“As the immune system learns to recognize that protein, it can stimulate the production of killer T cells to fight it.”
With Mayo Clinic’s therapeutic cancer vaccine strategy, the main building block consists of pieces of a person’s unique tumor protein mutations, known as neoantigens.
What does it consist on?
Microscopic fragments of the protein are generated from genetic mutations in tumor cells. Neoantigens can only be found on the surface of cancer cells, not healthy cells.
Because the neoantigens are foreign to the body, the immune system can recognize them as pathogenic invaders. When combined with immunotherapy, the vaccine could help mount a strong defensive response.
“The idea is that if we can identify 20 to 30 mutated proteins in a person’s cancer, we can include them in a vaccine. Then we will be able to repeatedly immunize people while they are receiving immunotherapy treatments with immune checkpoint inhibitors.”
In preclinical animal models, Dr. Knutson and his team applied the combination of immunotherapy and vaccine to treat breast cancer. They found that dual therapy prolonged survival without causing significant toxicity.
Design personalized vaccines for each patient
The vaccine development process begins in the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine with the sequencing of a patient’s tumor cells and the analysis of DNA and amino acid chains – the building blocks of proteins – to find potential candidates for neoantigens.
Oversight of critical antigen screening is provided by Dr. Yan Asmann, a bioinformatician at the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine in Florida and co-creator of Mayo Clinic’s Neoantigen Personalized Vaccine Program.
Steps to follow
It uses exhaustive sequencing methods and computational algorithms to choose up to 36 neoantigens—among hundreds of thousands—that can generate the strongest immune response.
Next, Dr. Asmann’s team manually validates the quality of each mutation and the accuracy of the neoantigen candidates that arise from those mutations.
Once the neoantigens are selected, Dr. Knutson formulates the vaccine ingredients with the goal of eliciting the strongest possible immune responses to completely destroy the tumor.
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