Common Cold Vaccine Could Fight Brain Tumors
Posted on: Tuesday, 29 April 2008, 00:20 CDT
U.S. scientists intend to begin testing a common cold vaccine to fight the effects of glioblastoma multiforme, a deadly form brain cancer, researchers at Duke University said on Monday.Sixteen patients with glioblastoma multiforme have already received the vaccine, and significant delays in tumor progression -- the time from when their tumor is cut out by a surgeon to when it starts to grow back, have been noted, the researchers said.
They hope that the vaccinations, which are developed from cells in the patients’ blood, will cause their immune systems to target the tumor.
Tumor progression time has stretched from six months to 12 months in patients who received vaccinations .
Overall survival has also risen from 14 months to almost 20 months, researchers said.
"We have seen patients who are beyond 20 months with no signs of their tumor growing," Dr. Duane Mitchell, a cancer researcher at Duke who led the study, said.
Human cytomegalovirus, which is closely related to the herpes virus, was active in about 80 percent of patients who are newly diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme.
"We are using the presence of the virus within these tumors as a target for a new immunotherapy," said Mitchell.
Patients involved with the study were also given temozolomide, a chemotherapy drug that could stimulate the immune response to the vaccine.
Mitchell said it is unclear whether the virus plays a role in promoting the cancer, but its presence in the tumors makes the virus a useful target for immune-based therapy.
"Seeing a doubling in the time to progression is very encouraging to us that in large-scale trials this will actually have a benefit," Mitchell said.
The study was presented at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons meeting in Chicago.
Researchers received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Brain Tumor Society and Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure Foundation.
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Source: redOrbit Staff and Wire Reports
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