2023-05-12 14:00:00
Cancer is still considered a disease without a cure, but scientists are already studying ways to use vaccines to fight it and the first tests with the immunizer from the German company BioNTech have shown to be very promising. According to the article published in the journal Nature, the vaccine induced increased immunity in up to 50% of patients with pancreatic cancer.
The vaccine developed by BioNTech uses the same RNA technology used in the manufacture of the vaccine against Covid-19 and the study was conducted by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
The study took place as follows: 16 patients with pancreatic cancer underwent surgery to remove the tumor and received the vaccine. The immunizer managed to generate an immune system response in 8 of them, who did not show any signs of tumor return 18 months after surgery and chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments with monoclonal antibodies.
In the study this is summarized as:
Overall, we report preliminary evidence that an individualized mRNA vaccine, in combination with immunotherapy and chemotherapy, induced substantial immune system T-cell activity in patients who underwent surgical removal of adenocarcinoma, and this correlated with delay in remission.
In the other patients, the vaccine had no effect on the immune system and the disease was detected again in the body after 13.4 months.
As this vaccine uses RNA in its composition, the idea is that it sends instructions to the patient’s cells, which must produce T cells to fight cancer, thus preventing the return of the disease through relapsed cells. In this way, the vaccine is personalized for each person, making its effectiveness greater.
However, it is important to point out that the objective of this first test is to verify if the vaccine is safe and not its effectiveness, as this will be evaluated in phases 2 and 3. In addition, this vaccine will be used mainly to fight pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma ( PDAC), which affects more than 90% of patients with tumors in the pancreas.
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