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February 20, 2008
Using Cancerous Tumors Against Themselves
UConn Scientist Studying Treatment Derived from Patient’s Own Cells
FARMINGTON, CONN. – A University of Connecticut Health Center researcher
has been studying a formula for an individualized drug therapy that causes
the body to identify cancerous cells and attack them.
“In this approach to treating cancer, one does not have the vaccine
in a bottle off the shelf so that everyone can get the same medicine,”
says Pramod Srivastava, Ph.D., director of the Center for Immunotherapy
of Cancer and Infectious Diseases at the UConn Health Center. “We take a
patient’s tumor and make the vaccine from it for that patient, on a
patient-by-patient basis.”
The Feb. 20 issue of the Journal
of Clinical Oncology details Srivastava’s findings from clinical
trials of the custom-made vaccine, called vitespen, in patients with
stage IV melanoma, or terminal skin cancer. Those who were vaccinated
tended to outlive those who were not, and the data suggest the more
doses a patient received, the greater the survival rate. Additionally,
patients with tumors in the skin, lymph nodes or lungs responded
relatively well to vitespen.
“The next step is to accrue in a new trial of stage IV melanoma
patients, those for whom we can make at least 10 doses of the vaccine,”
Srivastava says. “If the results are consistent with what we saw in this
trial, the FDA may approve this as a drug.”
This is the furthest any individualized tumor-derived vaccine of this
kind has gone in the clinical trial process, Srivastava says.
The science behind this therapy has to do with the combination of
heat shock proteins and peptides. Heat shock proteins are cell
components present in all living organisms. Peptides are protein
fragments, or the pieces left when the body replaces old proteins with
new ones. Heat shock proteins bound to peptides are drawn from tumor
tissue, and from them, the vaccine is made.
The study abstract is available at:
http://jco.ascopubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/26/6/955.
The University of Connecticut Health Center includes the schools of
medicine and dental medicine, the UConn Medical Group, University
Dentists, and John Dempsey Hospital, a Solucient Top 100 Hospital®
2006. Founded in 1961, the Health Center pursues a mission of
providing outstanding health care education in an environment of
exemplary patient care, research and public service. To learn more about
the UConn Health Center, visit our website at
www.uchc.edu.
Note: News professionals are invited to visit the Office of
Communications homepage at
www.uchc.edu/ocomm/ for archived news releases and other
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