Amidst the terror that’s been created around the world due to the novel coronavirus for about a year now, and the new types of enemies related to the corona that keep popping up, experts have made an extremely important discovery, and it’s about cancer.
Because we should not forget that we also have to fight other diseases which are definitely more dangerous than the coronavirus.
It’s been revealed that there’s a four-year-long Phase 1 trial of a personalized skin cancer vaccine that has concluded and it shows that the vaccine has extremely big promise in fighting off melanoma over a longer period of time.
IFL Science noted that the vaccine is called NeoVax and it stimulates the immune system to attack tumour cells in patients with high-risk deadly melanoma.
It’s been revealed that this was successful in bringing about an immune response in all eight patients who received it – more than that, it’s also important to mention the fact that the patients survived the trial period and six of which were disease-free after four years.
Personalized vaccines
According to the same online publication, personalized cancer vaccines are one of the most promising avenues for battling cancers that take almost 10 million lives each year worldwide.
They made sure to highlight the fact that “One “cure” for all cancers, in all likelihood, simply doesn’t exist – each cancer is its own cocktail of genetic or environmental factors, presenting different molecules that some therapies may be effective against and some may not. Our best chance at fighting back is most likely personalized therapies or vaccines, which are specifically made for each patient or exact cancer type.”
In order to make a vaccine that could combat melanoma, scientists from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts, aimed to target antigens that present on the surface of cancer cells.
“This type of antigen, called a neoantigen, is mutated and only exists on tumor cells – so if the immune system could be taught to recognize and attack them, the malignant cells could be destroyed,” according to the official notes. We suggest that you check out the complete article in order to learn more details.
