"This has the potential to dramatically change how we treat cancer," said Pramod Srivastava from University of Connecticut Health Center in US.
The novelty of Srivastava's approach in this new research is that it results in a drug specifically designed for a single person.
The new technique works in mice and a human test will start in late 2014. If the approach proves safe and effective, it could be the ultimate in individualized medicine.
"This research will serve as the basis for the first ever genomics-driven personalized medicine clinical trial in immunotherapy of ovarian cancer, and will begin at UConn Health this fall (autumn)," Srivastava added.
The researchers will sequence DNA from the tumours of 15 to 20 women with ovarian cancer, and use that information to make a personalized vaccine for each woman.
Previous researchers had looked at how strongly the immune system cells bound to the cancer's epitopes, sequence of proteins on a cell's exterior that the immune system 'sees' when it looks at a cell.
This works when making vaccines against viruses, but not for cancers.
Srivastava's team came up with a novel measure: they looked at how different the cancer epitopes were from the mice's normal epitopes.
And it worked. When mice were inoculated with vaccines made of the cancer epitopes differing the most from normal tissue, they were very resistant to skin cancer.
Theoretically, this approach could work for other cancers, although the research has yet to be done.
The findings appeared in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
The novelty of Srivastava's approach in this new research is that it results in a drug specifically designed for a single person.
The new technique works in mice and a human test will start in late 2014. If the approach proves safe and effective, it could be the ultimate in individualized medicine.
"This research will serve as the basis for the first ever genomics-driven personalized medicine clinical trial in immunotherapy of ovarian cancer, and will begin at UConn Health this fall (autumn)," Srivastava added.
The researchers will sequence DNA from the tumours of 15 to 20 women with ovarian cancer, and use that information to make a personalized vaccine for each woman.
Previous researchers had looked at how strongly the immune system cells bound to the cancer's epitopes, sequence of proteins on a cell's exterior that the immune system 'sees' when it looks at a cell.
This works when making vaccines against viruses, but not for cancers.
Srivastava's team came up with a novel measure: they looked at how different the cancer epitopes were from the mice's normal epitopes.
And it worked. When mice were inoculated with vaccines made of the cancer epitopes differing the most from normal tissue, they were very resistant to skin cancer.
Theoretically, this approach could work for other cancers, although the research has yet to be done.
The findings appeared in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
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