A kind of vaccine to treat a brain tumor

2009/12/27 Lakar Iraizoz, Oihane - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Farmakologia
• Medikuntza

Normally, the goal of vaccines is to prepare the immune system's response to certain viruses (Photo: The Alvi).

Conventional vaccines introduce us to the body an altered virus, with the same aspect as the real one, but that in reality will not hurt us, so that the body prepares systems of protection against it. Thus, if a real virus ever entered, the body would attack it before it damaged it.

The underlying mechanism is that our organism is able to recognize foreign bodies. Viruses, of course, are bodies introduced from outside. Tumor cells, however, are the same as other tumor cells and our body. However, to become a tumor cell, normal cells undergo certain changes. Among other things, some external components of the cells are modified, that is, the external aspect of the cells is modified. Therefore, you can identify immune systems as foreign and prepare a response to them.

Specialist in Clínica Universidad de Navarra extracting a brain tumor from a patient (Photo: Clínica Universidad de Navarra).

Treatment more than vaccine

The new therapy will not be just vaccination. The vaccine will be combined with the usual tumor treatment pathways at the Clínica Universidad de Navarra. Therefore, as in the case of several cancers, surgical removal of the tumor to patients will be followed by radiation therapy and chemotherapy sessions. Once all of them are finished, they will be given the vaccine.

The specialists of the clinic have explained that it is very important to perform the whole process, since the immune system has a limit, that is, it is only effective when there are few tumor cells in the body. When the tumor is large, foreign cells are many and the body is not able to attack all substances.

Also, removal of the tumor is very useful. This is because in the preparation of vaccines cells from the tumor part removed are used, so it is advisable to extract as many tumor cells as possible.

Of these cells, only some proteins from the outside use for the vaccine, specifically those components that make them different from healthy cells in the body. The immune system is based on the outer appearance of cells to determine if a certain cell is foreign or not, by analyzing the proteins outside.

Therefore, these proteins are taken and combined with cells of the immune system of patients in blood. They activate the cells of the immune system and prepare an external response to the bodies that contain them.

Tailored vaccines will be used during the trial: for each patient the ingredients of the body of the patient in question have been taken (Photo: ChrisGladis).

Individual patient

As can be seen, bespoke vaccines are the ones to be used in the trial. In fact, for the generation of vaccines for each patient, the cells of the immune system and the tumor cells (obtained and processed from the same tumor) come from the body of the patient in question. The tumor and blood of a given patient are used for each vaccine. They will be fully tailored vaccines.

Specialists expect the trial to be a success, as they have already used it before to treat some other tumor, obtaining good results. If the trial is successful, it can be started with more people. But they will have to wait for results. At the moment, the test will take place with 37 people.

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