Cancer Vaccines Are Proving Their Mettle

Shots for pancreas, head-and-neck and cervical tumors appear effective, studies find.

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
Tuesday, April 17, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

TUESDAY, April 17 (HealthDay News) -- Vaccines against deadly pancreatic and head and neck cancers are showing real promise and may one day become an important part of treatment, researchers report.

Researchers are also confirming that cervical cancer vaccines are both highly effective and long-lasting, according to two other studies.

All of the new findings were presented Tuesday at the American Association of Cancer Research's annual meeting in Los Angeles.

In one report, a team led by Andrew Lepisto, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of immunology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, presented the results of a phase I trial of a vaccine for pancreatic cancer.

In that trial, Lepisto's team gave an immune cell-based vaccine to 12 cancer patients who underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest malignancies, because it is often caught too late

"Patients who are eligible for surgery represent about 20 percent of all pancreatic cancer patients," Lepisto said during a teleconference. The five-year survival rate after surgery is only about 20 percent, he added.

"The goal of the vaccine was to raise a strong immune response to prevent the cancer from coming back," Lepisto explained.

"We found that if we did the surgery and followed up with the vaccine, we extended patient's lives from a 20 percent five-year survival rate to over 42 percent," he said. "There are five patients who are long-term survivors."

Lepisto is planning to use the five surviving patients to understand how the immune vaccine extended their lives.

Another study was led by Sanjay K. Srivastava, an assistant professor in the department of pharmacology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. His team found that an extract of triphala -- the dried and powdered fruits of three plants -- caused pancreatic cancer cells to die in mice.

"Our results demonstrate that triphala has strong anticancer properties given its ability to induce apoptosis [natural, programmed cell death] in pancreatic cancer cells without damaging normal pancreatic cells," Srivastava said in a prepared statement. "With follow-up studies, we hope to demonstrate its potential use as a novel agent for the prevention and treatment of pancreatic cancer," he added.