Potential Cancer Vaccine Entering Stage 3 Trials (go.com) 71
Slashdot reader quonset writes: After decades of study and testing, a potential vaccine for cancer may be on the horizon. Dr. Thomas Wagner, founder of Orbis Health Solutions, is using the body's own immune system to fight the disease, with each shot personalized to the patient, according to ABC News.
From the article: Typically, cancer cells evade a person's immune system because it is recognized as that person's cells. Wagner developed a tumor lysate particle only (TLPO) vaccine that uses a person's tumor cells to identify particular parts that are then presented back in the body using the vaccine in a way that can stimulate their immune system to gain the ability to detect these cancer cells like an infection, allowing the immune system to fight the cancer itself.
"People used to ask me the question, 'When will there be a cure for cancer?' And I've been doing this for 60 years and I could never answer that question," Wagner said. "Until recently, until the last three or four or five years." Wagner believes this type of cancer treatment could be a key to finding the long-awaited cure for cancer, all cancers, if paired with early detection.
Wagner's TLPO cancer vaccine has been tested in hundreds of patients with advanced forms of melanoma in Phase 2 clinical trials. The most recent data presented at an academic conference showed nearly 95% of people given only the vaccine were still alive three years after starting treatment and 64% were still disease-free. Among the most advanced forms of melanoma, disease-free survival after three years for people with stage III disease was 60% in the vaccine-only group, compared to about 39% in the placebo group. Disease-free survival for those with stage IV disease was about 68% in the vaccine-only group, and zero in the placebo group.
The most common side effects were redness or pain at the injection site, fever and fatigue after the injection – similar to other vaccines that stimulate an immune response.
Based on this data and other studies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has greenlit Wagner's vaccine to start a Phase 3 clinical trial. It will be a three-year endeavor with a goal to enroll 500 people and is planned to launch sometime this year, Riley Polk, president of Orbis Health Solutions, told WLOS, an ABC News affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina.
Polk's own father was told there were no treatment options left for his lung cancer, according to the article. That was more than 10 years ago, and "His father opted to try Wagner's cancer vaccine and lived 10 more years before dying from something unrelated to cancer." Polk gives ABC News this quote.
"You can tell me a lot of things, but you can't tell me [the vaccine] doesn't work."
From the article: Typically, cancer cells evade a person's immune system because it is recognized as that person's cells. Wagner developed a tumor lysate particle only (TLPO) vaccine that uses a person's tumor cells to identify particular parts that are then presented back in the body using the vaccine in a way that can stimulate their immune system to gain the ability to detect these cancer cells like an infection, allowing the immune system to fight the cancer itself.
"People used to ask me the question, 'When will there be a cure for cancer?' And I've been doing this for 60 years and I could never answer that question," Wagner said. "Until recently, until the last three or four or five years." Wagner believes this type of cancer treatment could be a key to finding the long-awaited cure for cancer, all cancers, if paired with early detection.
Wagner's TLPO cancer vaccine has been tested in hundreds of patients with advanced forms of melanoma in Phase 2 clinical trials. The most recent data presented at an academic conference showed nearly 95% of people given only the vaccine were still alive three years after starting treatment and 64% were still disease-free. Among the most advanced forms of melanoma, disease-free survival after three years for people with stage III disease was 60% in the vaccine-only group, compared to about 39% in the placebo group. Disease-free survival for those with stage IV disease was about 68% in the vaccine-only group, and zero in the placebo group.
The most common side effects were redness or pain at the injection site, fever and fatigue after the injection – similar to other vaccines that stimulate an immune response.
Based on this data and other studies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has greenlit Wagner's vaccine to start a Phase 3 clinical trial. It will be a three-year endeavor with a goal to enroll 500 people and is planned to launch sometime this year, Riley Polk, president of Orbis Health Solutions, told WLOS, an ABC News affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina.
Polk's own father was told there were no treatment options left for his lung cancer, according to the article. That was more than 10 years ago, and "His father opted to try Wagner's cancer vaccine and lived 10 more years before dying from something unrelated to cancer." Polk gives ABC News this quote.
"You can tell me a lot of things, but you can't tell me [the vaccine] doesn't work."
Re:Already Exists (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Already Exists (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is an incredibly specific treatment, but also the blueprint to something generic.
The idea is to sample the individual patient's tumor, isolate the DNA unique to the cancer cells, and then create a vaccine that will train the patient's immune system to recognize it. The final product is a vaccine that will only work for one person. Once proven safe and effective, the general technical will likely be expanded to treat far more types of cancers.
I would imagine it will take a lot of trial and error to expa
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And in particular "cancer" isn't any one thing, it's an umbrella term for a vast range of different conditions, which is also why the phrase "a cure for cancer" makes about as much sense as "a cure for sickness".
Correct. "Cancer" would better be described as a family of illnesses rather than an illness in itself. Lung cancer is vastly different from, say, Leukemia.
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And in particular "cancer" isn't any one thing, it's an umbrella term for a vast range of different conditions, which is also why the phrase "a cure for cancer" makes about as much sense as "a cure for sickness".
Correct. "Cancer" would better be described as a family of illnesses rather than an illness in itself. Lung cancer is vastly different from, say, Leukemia.
Yes, and non-small cell lung cancer is different from small cell lung cancer. And mesothelioma, which affects the lungs, is different from what is pathologically defined as lung cancer. We could keep going.
The point is, yes, cancer is not just one thing and there is unlikely to ever be a single “cure”, but in this case “cancer vaccine” refers to a particular class of treatments for cancer. Other terms you might have heard used: cancer immunotherapy, cancer targeted therapy, cancer ce
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For example Jobs had a very curable neuroendocrine tumour but decided to treat it with woo-woo until it became an uncurable adenocarcinogen (I think).
Not exactly, no. He was diagnosed with a resectable NET in 2003. He had the surgery and lived another 8 years. The median overall survival for his cancer type is better than one of the more common forms of pancreatic cancer, but it is still only about 41 months. The 10-year life expectancy is 18%. So his case was better than average. A lot of people focus on his choice to use alternative therapies, but there is very little to no evidence that a chemotherapy regimen would have improved his outcome.
Re:Already Exists (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. That's a vaccine against a virust that *causes* cancer. It prevents cancer by stopping infections by the virus.
This is a vaccine against the patient's own cancerous cell -- in effect it's a form of targeted autoimmunity.
This is precisely what the major aim of mRNA vaccine efforts pre-pandemic, although this particular vaccine uses a different technology: a solution dervied from the patient's tumor cells (tumor lysate). In a sense it's a lower-tech, than the but still quite novel approach.
I think there will be a kind of "desktop" molecular biology medicine in the futur4e where doctors or other specialists construct patient-specific vaccines from genetic blueprints and protein models, but if this pans out it could come a lot quicker.
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mRNA vaccine trials for cancer go back to 2008. https://us.vwr.com/cms/history... [vwr.com]
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So, Anti Vaxers will all start dieing of treatable cancer? Or go thru potentially years of pain and suffering going thru traditional chemo?
Am kind of conflicted if I should be happy or sad about that, considering some of them will be kids who have no say over their own bodies yet.........
Probably a positive in general I guess.
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A cancer treatment that costs mere thousands of dollars is far cheaper than any other actual cancer treatment out there right now. The article mentions that each vaccine is made specifically for each patient (they have to get something from the patient's own cancer cells), so just the development is going to cost some money.
But since cancer typically means tens to hundreds of thousands (and occasionally millions) of dollars in treatment, this could be not game-changing not only in terms of health but for th
But the money 'IS' going into the economy (Score:2)
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Of course it will go elsewhere, but more of it will stay in the pockets of patients, who will spend it on more useful things than the hospitals and drug companies will spend it on.
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This is a personalized medicine, so expect it to cost about the same as current autologous cell therapies, in the range of $0.5-1M. Just because they are calling it a “vaccine” doesn’t mean it will be cheap.
Re:For *A* cancer (Score:4, Insightful)
"has been tested in hundreds of patients with advanced forms of melanoma"
It is a pitential vaccine for one type of cancer, and not for cancer.
Do your job.
Reading isn't your forte, is it?
Polk's own father was told there were no treatment options left for his lung cancer, according to the article. That was more than 10 years ago, and "His father opted to try Wagner's cancer vaccine and lived 10 more years before dying from something unrelated to cancer." Polk gives ABC News this quote.
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Reading isn't your forte, is it?
What is the evidence base for cancers beyond melanoma? Can you cite results of even a single study in this regard? All of the trials for the vaccine appear to be related to melanoma. Are there any results at all related to other cancers?
Polk's own father was told there were no treatment options left for his lung cancer, according to the article. That was more than 10 years ago, and "His father opted to try Wagner's cancer vaccine and lived 10 more years before dying from something unrelated to cancer." Polk gives ABC News this quote.
I hope your claims are based on something more substantive than anecdotes.
Re:For *A* cancer (Score:5, Interesting)
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You know how expensive medical studies are, right?
Cost is irrelevant to the issue of unsubstantiated claims.
So of course they are doing one study first to get it approved for one type of cancer.
??? there are two pages of studies already going back years...
https://www.eliostherapeutics.... [eliostherapeutics.com]
At the same time, if it is established safe enough, it will be tried off label by patients that don't react to regular treatment options. That will provide further evidence
I'm not asking about further evidence I'm asking about the evidence that substantiates assertions related to cancer generally beyond melanoma.
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Re: For *A* cancer (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is that they have started a phase 3 trial that will look beyond melanoma. From TFA:
To circumvent some of [the challenge of raising funds to test on multiple forms of cancer] and get this treatment to more people that can produce more results, Wagner and his team just began what's called a basket trial, a type of clinical trial approved by the FDA [fda.gov] that allows the same vaccine that showed success in the melanoma clinical trials to be tested in anyone with a solid tumor who meets certain inclusion criteria. People in this trial need to have a low or minimal tumor burden so most will have already received some type of treatment prior to getting this vaccine, Wagner said.
The first person to receive this vaccine under this basket trial was Catie King, a native of Asheville, North Carolina, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer six years ago. King said she felt great after the first round of treatment, only experiencing some redness at the injection site, but no other side effects, WLOS reported.
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The point is that they have started a phase 3 trial that will look beyond melanoma.
What the summary states and what I'm responding to is the following claim "After decades of study and testing, a potential vaccine for cancer may be on the horizon" this is an extraordinary claim and apparently the evidence isn't there at present to justify it.
When I read this statement combined with the lung cancer anecdote what I saw was a deliberate attempt to confuse the issue imploring the reader to make the logical leap that the proposition "potential vaccine for cancer may be on the horizon" is supp
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It apparently isn't mine. After I read the summary I thought this was apersonalized vaccine, and as such I was wondering what was new about it. But from the other comments I gather that it ISN'T a personalized vaccine. In which case HOORAY. Cancer is one thing that we could do without.
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What makes you think its's not personalized? The technique described in their paper is to collect cells from the patient and produce a vaccine with them. That's the "tumor lysate" part. It's not particularly new, lots of people have been working on this for quite a while. This guy started a company and has put together funding to do a phase III trial, which is the new part.
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Yes, but keep in mind that these basket trials are designed to prove safety, not clinical benefit. So all of these patients received standard-of-care in addition to the TLPO as an adjuvant. That’s why the phase III clinical trial is needed.
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The technique is generic. You could be pedantic and claim it's a bunch of vaccines, each one for one specific cancer (not type, one particular person's particular cancer), but the sane person's summary that it's a generic vaccine for cancer is pretty good.
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For at least the past 100 years [nih.gov]. If you consider all the other innoculations given over time and the testing of what worked and what didn't, roughly 2,400 years [who.int].
You like being stupid, don't you?
Re: since when did we do trials? (Score:1, Offtopic)
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Personally I am awaiting the "natural immunity to cancer" crowd.
Or "cancer is only for old and fat people"
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Where is SuperKendall? Seems like his opinions are really needed here.
My problem with this is how is it a "vaccine"? It's a treatment, you already need the disease.
Re:I can't wait for the stupids to chime in (Score:5, Informative)
I feel like the real distinction is that a vaccine is something that doesn't actually affect the pathogens or the symptoms directly but rather affects your immune system to affect something it wasn't doing before. Like the tumor doesn't care about this chemical the patients are getting as opposed to something like an antibiotic.
CDC just says: " A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose."
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A vaccine presents an antigen to the body's immune system that causes the immune system to attack things that display that antigen. You're used to vaccines that are given before you get the disease, but there are many that work after exposure too. The rabies vaccine is probably the most common example.
Too late (Score:2)
I already have stage 4 cancer and don't expect to make it to 55 years old.
So....yeah...no help here, thanks anyway.
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Dude just said he has cancer and that's the most compassionate thing you can come up with?
Re:Too late (Score:4, Informative)
"I already have stage 4 cancer ..."
I'm sorry to hear that.
From the article:
"... Based on this data and other studies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has greenlit Wagner's vaccine to start a Phase 3 clinical trial. It will be a three-year endeavor with a goal to enroll 500 people and is planned to launch sometime this year, Riley Polk, president of Orbis Health Solutions, told WLOS, an ABC News affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina."
Maybe you'd be able to enroll for this phase 3.
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"I already have stage 4 cancer ..."
I'm sorry to hear that.
From the article: "... Based on this data and other studies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has greenlit Wagner's vaccine to start a Phase 3 clinical trial. It will be a three-year endeavor with a goal to enroll 500 people and is planned to launch sometime this year, Riley Polk, president of Orbis Health Solutions, told WLOS, an ABC News affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina."
Maybe you'd be able to enroll for this phase 3.
Or get it on compassionate drug use grounds outside the scope of the trial.
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I will try to check into it.
I just finished the 3rd session of my current (third) round of chemotherapy. I have 3 more to go (basically six weeks). After that they will do another scan and decide:
1). It's working, for now, keep doing it.
2). It's not working. Here's your "one year or less to live" letter. You're welcome to try something else, clinical trials or whatever.
Thanks.
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I will try to check into it.
I just finished the 3rd session of my current (third) round of chemotherapy. I have 3 more to go (basically six weeks). After that they will do another scan and decide:
1). It's working, for now, keep doing it.
2). It's not working. Here's your "one year or less to live" letter. You're welcome to try something else, clinical trials or whatever.
Thanks.
Good luck. Also ask about immune checkpoint inhibitors. For some kinds of cancer, they can be downright amazingly effective.
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Yeah. Those require your cancer to be "mismatch repair deficient". Unfortunately, mine isn't.
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Good luck to you, whatever path you get.
Fuck cancer.
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* For certain types of cancers only (Score:2)
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No, not even those are all things they have in common. When examining cancers, usually they start with the degree of differentiation from the surrounding tissue, and evaluate from there.
Re: * For certain types of cancers only (Score:1)
Please explain which cancers don't result from cells not self-destructing when they should, because uncontrolled cell growth is literally the definition of cancer.
They're not supposed to "self-destruct". You're thinking of the Hayflick limit, which is regulated by telomere length, which most cancers counteract with an enzyme called telomerase.
Re: * For certain types of cancers only (Score:1)
The cell has to be differentiated in such a way that the immune system would do anything at all. If it is, THEN it has to evade it somehow. Again, not always the case.
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That was the first question in my head was "what kind of cancer?" but they're claiming all types. Sounds a bit incredible to me, but if the FDA approved a phase 3 trial then there may be something to it. Also AFAIK we still don't really understand the pathway for Alzheimer's disease, unlike cancer, which means you can't really say it's just related to aging like you can say with loss of skin elasticity. Certainly not for heart disease.
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There are very few places you can't do a needle biopsy if you really need to, including the brain. Typically the reason not to do so isn't because "surgeons are too chicken" but rather that the result wouldn't make enough of a difference to be worth the risk.
Preferential treatment (Score:1)
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Milk drinking for ulcers was even a standby trope on Television, like a hit on the head causing amnesia, or falling into a quicksand pit.
So melanoma vaccine worked for lung cancer ?? (Score:2)
Cautiously Optmistic (Score:2)
While it is wonderful we can potentially achieve a vaccine to prevent some cancers, I dislike how we in the U.S. fundamentally treat people in relation to medicine and work.
Will this be even remotely affordable? As in, I wouldn't think twice about getting it if I was poor with bad or no medical insurance.
Also, as we keep increasing the health and lifespan of people, too many politicians want social safety nets reduced, like Social Security retirement benefits to start at a higher age because people live lo
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Can't wait (Score:3)
Doctor: I have good news and bad news.
The good news is, when I give you this shot, you'll live for another 200 years.
The bad news is, you'll have to work for 190 years more.
I wonder why it doesn't have 100% efficacy (Score:2)
The best part about this (Score:2)