Most attempts to create therapeutic cancer vaccines are based on custom-made approaches that use a patient's own tumor cells to generate a strong immune response against cancer.
However, developing these kinds of personalized vaccines is time-consuming, expensive and often impractical. Using an alternative approach, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) in collaboration with the Gunma University School of Medicine in Japan, have developed a vaccine strategy for head and neck cancer that targets multiple peptides (parts of proteins) to activate the immune system to attack tumors. Their findings, abstract number 5113, will be included in a press briefing on cancer vaccines at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, April 14-18, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
The researchers created the vaccine to target a tumor suppressor gene called p53, which is mutated in most cancers and associated with poor clinical outcomes. Previous research has determined that mutated p53 also expresses unaltered, or "wild-type," p53 peptides in tumors. When presented on dendritic cells, these wild-type p53 peptides may induce an immune response to strengthen the body's natural defenses against cancer and decrease the chance of cancer recurrence and the formation of secondary tumors.