Newswise — On October 14th, the first patient will be vaccinated in an NYU Medical Center clinical trial of a new cancer vaccine.
The vaccine is designed to prevent patients who have already had a kind of cancer called follicular lymphoma from having a recurrence of the disease.
Follicular lymphoma causes tumors to grow in the part of the body's immune system that are called lymph nodes. "Patients with lymphoma are very young, usually in their thirties, so they will die of this disease," explains Giorgio Inghirami, M.D., Associate Professor of Pathology, who is leading the clinical trial. Even with treatment such as chemotherapy, lymphoma re-develops in the patient in nearly 100 percent of cases. About 40,000 new cases of this type of cancer are diagnosed every year in the United States.
The lymphoma vaccine is designed to eliminate any cancer cells that are left over after chemotherapy, and therefore prevent the disease from recurring. The vaccine, which was developed over the last ten years at the National Cancer Institute, has undergone Phase I and Phase II trials already, which are designed to show only that it is safe for use in first animals and then humans.
In these early trial stages, results were so dramatic that the NCI accelerated further human testing. The vaccine prevented the recurrence of the disease in 85 percent of cases, and 50 percent are still in remission after seven years. However, these early trials used a small number of patients, which is why further testing is needed. The current trial is expected to recruit about 500 patients nationwide.
The vaccine is unusual in that each dose is tailor-made from each patient's tumor cells, and then re-injected into the patient. Substances that are specifically found on the patient's tumor cells are purified and used as a chemical alarm system for the person's immune system. In essence, these substances give the body's immune cells a specific target to look for, so they are more likely to go after the tumor cells.
NYU School of Medicine is actively recruiting patients for this vaccine trial. Patients must be newly diagnosed with what is called low-grade follicular lymphoma and must not have had any chemotherapy. Trial patients will be given chemotherapy, and once their cancer is in remission, they will be given the vaccine. Minorities are particularly needed as participants in the trial.
The success of this trial could have implications outside of treating this particular cancer. "If the vaccine is proven to function," says Dr. Inghirami, "it's possible that every kind of disease could be tagged this way."
The trial is being sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, and, in addition to NYU, is being held at seven other hospitals throughout the country.
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