Brain Tumor Vaccine Shows Promising Results

ScienceDaily is reporting that a new vaccine used in the treatment of a cancer found primarliy in the brain is showing promising results after an initial trial at the University of California. "Of the 12 patients being treated, eight can currently be evaluated for overall survival, while four are still receiving treatment. Seven out of the eight patients have exceeded the historical median benchmark of 6.5 months survival from time of recurrence. The investigators will continue to follow the patients for overall survival. Based on these results, a larger, multi-center phase 2 study is planned for late 2007."

Comments

Vaccine?

[Grashnak]

I know they use the word vaccine in TFA, but my understanding of a vaccine (plus a cursory glance at a dictionary) suggests that a vaccine should be something you administer in order to prevent someone from getting a disease, rather than something you use to treat a person who already has the disease.

Any of you bright science boys or girls know what the difference is between a "vaccine" and any other drug you might use to treat a diease? Just wondering.

Re:Vaccine?

[DebateG]

A vaccine is any substance that stimulates your immune system to attack a pathogen specifically. It stimulates what is known as the adaptive immune system, which is the part of the immune system that recognizes a specific infection. For example, you may be infected with Hepatitis A, and that generates a nonspecific inflammatory response. Later on, your T and B cells "learn" to specifically begin attacking the Hepatitis A virus. If you get infected with Hepatitis B, you still have the nonspecific inflammatory response, but your learned response against Hepatitis A doesn't help here; it's very specific for Hepatitis A.

In contrast, most drugs don't prime your immune system against specific proteins on the pathogen. Chemotherapy drugs tend to just kill rapidly dividing cells non-specifically; you get nausea because the normal cells in your gut are also killed. There are some drugs such as monoclonal antibodies that can specifically attack and kill the pathogenic cells, but they don't work by priming your immune cells.

It's a misconception that all vaccines prevent you from getting the disease. The BCG vaccine for TB doesn't really prevent you from getting infected with TB chronically; it prevents you from getting a really severe kind of acute TB. In fact, some vaccines are actually administered after you've already been infected. For example, the rabies vaccine causes a brisk immune response against rabies. You usually receive it *after* you've been bitten by a rabid animal, so there is already rabies virus replicating within your cells. It helps you clear the virus that is already there.

I hope this helps.

Re:A pre-emptive 'you insensitive clod' comment...

[RingDev]

I'm with ya there man, I lost a close friend in high school to a brain tumor. ...to go from worrying about your learning permit to worrying if you'll live to Christmas. It is nothing I'd wish on any one, let alone a child.

-Rick

Re:It's not a tumah!

[Unc-70]

I sympathise to a degree, such money would be better spent fighting disease rather than wars against fellow humans. However, it might be worth a look at the history books. See The War on Cancer

I will also ask for an appropriation of an extra $100 million to launch an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer, and I will ask later for whatever additional funds can effectively be used. The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve this goal. America has long been the wealthiest nation in the world. Now it is time we became the healthiest nation in the world.--President Richard M. Nixon in his 1971 State of the Union address.

The sad fact is that finding a cure for anything, and cancer in particular, is really, really hard.

Read the Article

[trigggl]

"Of the 12 patients being treated, eight can currently be evaluated for overall survival, while four are still receiving treatment. Seven out of the eight patients have exceeded the historical median benchmark of 6.5 months survival from time of recurrence. The investigators will continue to follow the patients for overall survival. Based on these results, a larger, multi-center phase 2 study is planned for late 2007."

What I get from that is that they can't include 4 of them in the results yet. I don't see anywhere in the article anything that suggests any patients in the study passing. I would think that they would want to be clear on that in a study. You can get sued for giving people false hope.