Discovery of new vaccine approach for treatment of cancer

Jan27
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Joe Lovrek

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2012) — Scientists in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, have developed a new vaccine to treat cancer at the pre-clinical level. The research team led by Professor Kingston Mills, Professor of Experimental Immunology at Trinity College Dublin discovered a new approach for treating the disease based on manipulating the immune response to malignant tumours. The discovery has been patented and there are plans to develop the vaccine for clinical use for cancer patients.

The first cancer vaccine Sipuleucel-T (Provenge™) was licensed last year for use in prostate cancer patients unresponsive to hormone treatment. Unfortunately, this cell based vaccine only improves patient survival by an average of 4.1 months. Vaccines for infectious diseases are highly effective at generating immune responses that prevent infection with bacteria or viruses. The immune system can also protect us against tumours and in theory a vaccine approach should be effective against cancer. In practice this has proven very difficult because unlike infectious diseases, tumours are derived from normal human cells, and not made up of foreign substances or antigens capable of triggering an immune response. The tumours instead produce molecules that suppress the efficacy of the immune system. They generate regulatory cells that inhibit the immune response that could potentially clear the tumours.

Professor Mills’ group has developed a novel vaccine and immunotherapeutic approach that can overcome these obstacles and has the potential to significantly improve on existing technologies.

The therapy is based on a combination of molecules that manipulates the immune response to curb the regulatory arm while enhancing the protective arm, allowing the induction of specialist white blood cell called killer T cells to target and eliminate the tumours. The new vaccine approach was found to be highly effective at pre-clinical stage in treating a range of cancers in murine models.

The research was performed by a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Neil Marshall, at Trinity College Dublin, with the help of two PhD students, Anna-Maria Corcoran and Karen Galvin and was funded by a Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator award to Professor Mills. The discoveries have been patent protected and Professor Mills has plans to translate them to the clinic via a TCD Campus Company, TriMod Therapeutics that he co-founded with Dr Jeremy Skillington.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Trinity College Dublin.

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Journal Reference:

  1. N. A. Marshall, K. C. Galvin, A.-M. B. Corcoran, L. Boon, R. Higgs, K. H. G. Mills. Immunotherapy with PI3K Inhibitor and Toll-Like Receptor Agonist Induces IFN-  IL-17 Polyfunctional T Cells That Mediate Rejection of Murine Tumors. Cancer Research, 2011; DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-11-0307

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Posted in Cancer News

New drug release mechanism utilizes 3-D superhydrophobic materials

Jan27
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Joe Lovrek

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2012) — According to a recent study, there is a new mechanism of drug release using 3D superhydrophobic materials that utilizes air as a removable barrier to control the rate at which drug is released.

The study was electronically published on January 16, 2012 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Boston University (BU) graduate student Stefan Yohe, under the mentorship of Mark Grinstaff , PhD, BU professor of biomedical engineering and chemistry, and Yolonda Colson, MD, PhD, director of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Cancer Center, prepared drug-loaded superhydrophobic meshes from biocompatible polymers using an electrospinning fabrication method.

By monitoring drug release in aqueous solution and mesh performance in cytotoxicity assays, the team demonstrated that the rate of drug release correlates with the removal of the air pocket within the material, and that the rate of drug release can be maintained over an extended period.

“The ability to control drug release over a 2-3 month period is of significant clinical interest in thoracic surgery with applications in pain management and in the prevention of tumor recurrence after surgical resection,” said Colson. Colson is also a thoracic surgeon at BWH with an active practice focused on the treatment of lung cancer patients.

This approach along with the design requirements for creating 3D superhydrophobic drug-loaded materials, the authors write, should facilitate further exploration and evaluation of these drug delivery materials in a variety of cancer and non-cancer applications.

This research was supported by Boston University, Center for Integration of Medicine Innovative Technology, Coulter Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

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Journal Reference:

  1. Stefan T. Yohe, Yolonda L. Colson, Mark W. Grinstaff. Superhydrophobic Materials for Tunable Drug Release: Using Displacement of Air To Control Delivery Rates. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2012; 120118151911004 DOI: 10.1021/ja211148a

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Posted in Cancer News

Grape seed extract kills head and neck cancer cells, leaves healthy cells unharmed

Jan27
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Joe Lovrek

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2012) — Nearly 12,000 people will die of head and neck cancer in the United States this year and worldwide cases will exceed half a million.

A study published this week in the journal Carcinogenesis shows that in both cell lines and mouse models, grape seed extract (GSE) kills head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

“It’s a rather dramatic effect,” says Rajesh Agarwal, PhD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

It depends in large part, says Agarwal, on a healthy cell’s ability to wait out damage.

“Cancer cells are fast-growing cells,” Agarwal says. “Not only that, but they are necessarily fast growing. When conditions exist in which they can’t grow, they die.”

Grape seed extract creates these conditions that are unfavorable to growth. Specifically, the paper shows that grape seed extract both damages cancer cells’ DNA (via increased reactive oxygen species) and stops the pathways that allow repair (as seen by decreased levels of the DNA repair molecules Brca1 and Rad51 and DNA repair foci).

“Yet we saw absolutely no toxicity to the mice, themselves,” Agarwal says.

Again, the grape seed extract killed the cancer cells but not the healthy cells.

“I think the whole point is that cancer cells have a lot of defective pathways and they are very vulnerable if you target those pathways. The same is not true of healthy cells,” Agarwal says.

The Agarwal Lab hopes to move in the direction of clinical trials of grape seed extract, potentially as an addition to second-line therapies that target head and neck squamous cell carcinoma that has failed a first treatment. 

This work was supported by the R01 grants AT003623 from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and CA91883 from the National Cancer Institute, NIH.

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Journal Reference:

  1. S. Shrotriya, G. Deep, M. Gu, M. Kaur, A. K. Jain, S. Inturi, R. Agarwal, C. Agarwal. Generation of reactive oxygen species by grape seed extract causes irreparable DNA damage leading to G2/M arrest and apoptosis selectively in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cells. Carcinogenesis, 2012; DOI: 10.1093/carcin/bgs019

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Posted in Cancer News
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