Cancer "Vaccine" Eliminates Tumors in Mice

[djohnflatfeecfp]

For those of us not in the field of medicine, this definitely catches my eye. From the article - "Injecting minute amounts of two immune-stimulating agents directly into solid tumors in mice can eliminate all traces of cancer in the animals, including distant, untreated metastases, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine."

 

Any thoughts from some of the experts on the forum?

[ticker]

I'll offer a few:

- It's promising.

- The headline almost always overstates the case.

- Successes in mice have a terrible history of correlating to successes in humans.  Many billions of dollars have been pipetted and dissected in confirming that human tumors/neurons/myocytes/etc. often don't behave like those in mice.

- If they ever make a transgenic mouse that is immune to a $0.49 Victor snap trap, I'll be worried.

[Craigy]

One of these cancer cures is definitely going to turn people into zombies.

[WallStreetPhysician]

djohnflatfeecfp wrote:

For those of us not in the field of medicine, this definitely catches my eye. From the article – “Injecting minute amounts of two immune-stimulating agents directly into solid tumors in mice can eliminate all traces of cancer in the animals, including distant, untreated metastases, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.”

 

Any thoughts from some of the experts on the forum?

Click to expand...

It's definitely exciting, but the pipeline of drug development requires preclinical testing (i.e. mouse models such as this), then a series of clinical trials (e.g. Phase I, II, III) in humans. Many drugs / treatments succeed in animal models but fail in clinical trials, but some succeed, and those are the drugs that oncologists / physicians now routinely prescribe to patients.

-WSP

[Zaphod]

Lots of things work/harm mice that sadly doesnt translate.

[Ryan]

Full article here-- http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/426/eaan4488.full

According to the paper, there are currently phase 1 (human) trials with CpG analogs and OX-40 activators used in isolation of one another. This study combines the two in mice and showed synergism. Basically, CpG induces OX-40 expression and an OX-40 antibody activates it, leading to t-cell mediated tumor destruction. From the study abstract, "Remarkably, this combination of a TLR ligand and an anti-OX40 antibody can cure multiple types of cancer and prevent spontaneous genetically driven cancers."

Pretty neat, in theory, but extrapolating to humans basically can't be done without trials. I think all of the phase 1 trials for CpG (or at least the prep they were using) are for lymphomas, maybe 1-2 years before some of those complete. OX-40 is in phase 1 trials more broadly for advanced cancers and those studies have some more time on them.

Med-IMMUNE.

[jhwkr542]

Certainly promising and I think a lot of oncology is moving towards targeted therapy like this.  CAR-T cell therapy is one of the newer ones, and it seems to work very well when traditional therapies have failed.

[squirrel]

Sorry to take us off topic a bit and geek out. Interesting. Recently been reading about one of these markers (OX-40). However outside of cancer where the goal appears to be a stimulatory to fight cancer, a lot of talk around it outside of oncology revolves around inhibition in trying to treat or prevent cytokine storm events (seen often in epidemic influenza) that often times lead to higher mortality.

Making me dust off some old brain cells. But if you are into this type of thing, you will likely hear more and more about OX-40, both in its stimulatory benefits in oncology and how inhibition may improve mortality of conditions complicated by cytokine storm. Overstimulation of this may lead to systemic complications. As stated above, just because it worked in mice, it may end up being harmful in humans.