According to the National Cancer Institute, the FDA has approved two types of vaccines to prevent cancer: vaccines against the hepatitis B virus, which can cause liver cancer, and vaccines against human papillomavirus types 16 and 18, which are responsible for about 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. The FDA has also approved one cancer treatment vaccine for men with metastatic prostate cancer. Perhaps this could be more general and effective at lower costs than some other prevention and treatments - what are your thoughts?
Scarcely! Inexpensive and efficient way to prevent stomach cancer is to eat fresh food. The effective approach to do this with lung cancer is not to smoke. Colon cancer is prevented by physical activity and normalization of body weight. Vaccines against oncogenic pathogens are one of many means to prevent cancers. One of great problems is breast cancer. There are some evidence that mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) can provoke it, but too few investigators are involved in these studies.
Search in PudMed by "cancer vaccines " gives 19621 results.
The most of them are related to therapeutic vaccines. Like for melanoma.
Wolchok J.D., Livingston P.O. Vaccines for melanoma: translating basic immunology into new therapies// The Lancet Oncology. – 2001. – Vol.2. –P.205–211.
Moiseyenko V, Imyanitov E, Danilova A, Danilov A, Baldueva I. Cell technologies in immunotherapy of cancer // Adv. Exp. Med. Biol. —2007. Vol.601.—P.387—393
I believe metformin can be used for cancer prevention in general and it is cheep thats the problem!
http://www.lef.org/Magazine/2012/2/Can-Diabetes-Drug-Prevent-Cancer-Death/Page-01
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24114491
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/research-updates/2013/metformin
Thank you very much, Andrey! Very interesting reports! Great results!
Concerning therapeutic vaccines (this term covers very wide range of therapeutics, stimulating antitumor immunity) I would say that we ever will see autoimmune disorders as backside effects. Key question here is the antigen which is used as a target for immune system. The situations when we can direct immune response to really tumor-specific antigen are too rare, for example, monoclonal products (Igs or TCRs) expressed by certain lymphomas or incorrectly glycosylated proteins on the surface of epithelial cancer cells. General rule is autoantigen expressed "at the wrong time and wrong place". However, adaptive immune system has been trained not to recognize or react weakly to these antigens. Using transgenic TCRs and CARs allows to induce strong immune response to these antigens, but to some extent increases risk for severe autoimmune disorders. In any case this requires to use highly personalized approache to therapy.
Are these vaccines effective against CANCER or against one of the "causes" of CANCER (viruses, in this case?)
Dear Carlos, therapeutic vaccines are designed to be effective diractly against cancer cells. TCRs and CARs also aimed to target MHC molecule plus cancer related peptide or cancer related antigens. Vaccines against oncogenic viruses is different history. They can prevent, but can not treat cancer. Obviously, this inability is result of immune selection, which destroy highly immunogenic tumor cells expressing viral proteins. It is well established fact that papilloma viruses are detected in cancer cells only at early stages of tumor progression.
Hi Dmitry:
How effective therapeutic vaccines of the kind you describe have been so far? Thanks, Carlos
Here, are two references to very good reviews by Nicholas Restifo:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274739333_Adoptive_cell_transfer_as_personalized_immunotherapy_for_human_cancer
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258061317_Reassessing_target_antigens_for_adoptive_T-cell_therapy
Article Reassessing target antigens for adoptive T-cell therapy
Article Adoptive cell transfer as personalized immunotherapy for human cancer
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