A dendritic cell-based therapeutic vaccine for pancreatic cancer developed by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine has successfully stalled the disease from progressing in a handful of patients three years post-vaccination.
The results, part of a press briefing on cancer vaccines held at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research in Los Angeles, provide promising evidence that the vaccine can trigger a patient's own immune system to rally against pancreatic cancer and offer new insights into how the vaccine could be made even more effective. The study is abstract number 4896 in the meeting proceedings.
"Pancreatic cancer is extremely resistant to chemotherapy and radiation and, as a result, has a very high mortality rate," said Andrew Lepisto, Ph.D., first author of the study and post-doctoral researcher, department of immunology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. "One strategy to improve the odds of survival is to help the immune system recognize the presence of pancreatic cancer cells and attack them. Our study, although small, demonstrates that this strategy can be used with some success in pancreatic cancer patients by slowing down, or even stopping, the progression of cancer."
The Pitt team created a therapeutic vaccine for pancreatic cancer made up of a synthetic version of MUC1 , a tumor-associated protein that is expressed by pancreatic tumor cells , combined with the patient's own dendritic cells, which act as the quarterbacks of the immune system by coordinating its attack against foreign invaders.
The current study, the fourth in a series of MUC1 vaccine trials at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, included 12 patients with pancreatic cancer who received the vaccine by injection once every three weeks for a total of three doses and were given a booster dose six months later. Four patients demonstrated a stable and continuous presence of antibodies against MUC1 and have no evidence of disease more than three years after the vaccination was completed and close to five years after diagnosis and surgery.