Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, with an increasing rate of cases each year. Multiple treatments, including chemotherapy, surgery, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy are utilized to help patients fight the disease. In addition to these efforts, doctors and scientists continue to seek improvements in cancer detection, prevention, diagnosis, and survivorship. Recently, a groundbreaking vaccine treatment has moved on from small human trials and has begun testing on a larger size and scale. In England, thousands of patients started trials for the National Health Service Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad. The new cancer vaccine is a type of immunotherapy that aims to cause an immune response where the patient’s own immune system targets cancer cells and prevents the cancer from returning. Immunotherapy is a treatment that uses a person’s immune system to fight cancer cells.
Cancer can start anywhere in the human body and spread to other parts of the body through lymph and blood systems. Cancer is defined as a disease in which abnormal (cancerous) cells divide uncontrollably. When these cancer cells form a lump in the tissue, they turn into tumors. Cancer is a genetic disease, often caused by DNA damage from harmful environmental substances or inherited from parents.
One of the primary cancer treatments, chemotherapy, uses drugs to reduce the growth of or kill cancer cells. However, this treatment has side effects including fatigue, loss of appetite, hair loss, neuropathy (damage to the nerves that causes numbness or muscle weakness), and damage to healthy cells. The new vaccine aims to produce fewer side effects compared to chemotherapy by targeting cancer cells while leaving healthy tissues unharmed, unlike chemotherapy which indiscriminately targets both cancerous and noncancerous cells. The vaccination works by exposing immune cells to proteins that are found only in cancer cells. These proteins are called antigens and their function is to make an immune response against a substance. This helps teach the immune system to recognize, react to, and destroy cancer cells. Cancer vaccines can be made in three ways, either from the patient’s tumor cells, tumor-associated antigens, or the patient’s dendritic cells. Dendritic cells are a type of cell in the immune system that boosts responses by displaying antigens on its surface to other cells in the immune system. The side effects reported have varied due to factors such as the type of cancer and how advanced it is, how healthy the patient was before treatment, and the type and dose of treatment vaccine. Some patients have reported symptoms and side effects similar to the flu including fever, chills, weakness, dizziness, nausea, muscle aches, fatigue, trouble breathing, and headache.
The Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad is at 30 sites around the UK. The trials focused on skin, colorectal, bladder, lung, kidney, and pancreatic cancer. Additionally, blood tests and samples of tissues were taken to see if the patients met the eligibility criteria. The vaccinations are based on mRNA technology and are created by analyzing a person’s tumor to identify mutations specific to their cancer. The vaccination is still in its early stages and doctors have limited data on the in-body response. However, the initial results have shown it to be effective in eliminating remaining tumor cells after surgery and significantly reducing the risk of cancer returning. The London trails are an important stepping stone in helping millions of people who suffer from cancer. If the trials prove to be successful, this advancement can offer a more targeted and less harmful alternative to patients around the world.
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