Posted on 03/09/2017 8:26:07 PM PST by nickcarraway
Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in American women. More than 300,000 women will be diagnosed this year. Researchers are working on a vaccine that could lead to prevention.
“Your general practitioner who normally says 'everything is fine' goes pale,” said Barbara Popoli, while speaking in front of lawmakers to push for more funding for cancer research. This is what happened when Popoli found out she had inflammatory breast cancer.
“Sixty to 80 percent chance I was going to die from this,” Popoli said.
After chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, with her husband by her side, she enrolled in a breast cancer vaccine clinical trial. The vaccine is supposed to stop the cancer from ever coming back again.
“I think it’s a potential game changer because we’ve actually shown that people lose this specific immune response early in the process of breast cancer development,” said Dr. Brian Czerniecki, chair of the department of Breast Oncology at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida detailed.
Czerniecki has been working on this vaccine for more than a decade.
“It’s meant to restore an immune response,” explained Czerniecki.
To make the vaccine, white blood cells are removed from the patient. Then those T cells are activated to become immune responders that target cancer cells. The customized vaccine is injected back into the patient.
“It showed a nice impact in that some people had their disease completely disappear before we operated on them,” Czerniecki said.
The vaccine can be given six to nine times to mostly patients who have HER2 positive disease. Eighty percent of those in the trial had an immune response. “It’s revving up my T cells so my own body can fight this from here on out and hopefully never ever have to go through this again,” Popoli said.
The vaccine side effects could be fatigue, injection site reaction and chills.
The vaccine is still in clinical trials.
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In other words, next to nothing.
CAR-T (Chimeric Antigen Receptor, T cell) therapy has been used very successfully against the blood cancers and they are now beginning to make headway in ‘solid’ cancers. Chemo is on the way out, though it wont happen anytime soon. Immunotherapy - using the body’s own immune system to attack cancer, is the new sheriff in town.
Great To see new strides being made! Thanks for the ping.
That’s great it’s helping with some blood cancers. I had a donor stem cell transplant recently after several rounds of Chemo for acute myeloid leukemia. From what I’ve seen so far, this therapy hasn’t found its way to AML patients yet. It’s a tricky thing with AML because it saturates the bone marrow fast - within a month or 2 and without immediate chemo, patients will die in another month. So, it’s tricky to make sure they get it right or the patient won’t survive.
They are probably trying it on chronic Leukemia patients first. They are doing great and have come a long way with treatments with blood cancers. They have me on a daily maintenance chemo trial with targets an aggressive gene, hoping to prevent relaps. The chemo is actually FDA approved for kidney & liver cancer.
If I had cancer again, some fatigue and chills would be well worth it to see the disease go away for good.
Of course, all the nausea and vomiting from chemo were worth it the last time I had cancer.
Bravo!
Oh it absolutely has : ) Bluebird pharma is carrying out clinical trials for a CAR-T product called BB2121 for AML. And they have got impressive results. You can search Google News or up to date info.
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bmfl
That would be great If so. If you have a link I’d love to see it as Im unable to locate the information outside of the title. Thank you!
Thank you. They are doing great work. They are working on Multiple Myeloma. I have Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
Speed the research up and bring it to market without costing 14K a dose.
Ugggh..sorry I was up really late last night and mistook mm for aml. So many biotech companies are jumping onto the car-t bandwagon there’s bound to be one for aml sooner or later. I will let you know if I see something. I follow this stuff closely.
Thank you so much! That means a lot. <3
“Immunotherapy - using the body’s own immune system to attack cancer, is the new sheriff in town.”
I’m a firm believer that extreme stress in a woman’s life wreaks havoc on her immune system. Of course, in that state the system isn’t able to fight cancer cells. My family and friends have suggested that stress was the impetus for my cancer in 2014, and resultant mastectomy. I have come to believe them.
This immunotherapy sounds logical and promising. Still, I’m trying to decrease the stress.
I have a set of aunts who married brothers, the cancer gene comes down the male line, all the female children, my cousins get genetic testing done at an early age as BC is a early issue for them. And they will pass that gene down their family gene line for a very long time. And they start Mammo’s young. No one can predict what age BC will occur no more than they can cervical cancer. I’ve seen women have both in their 30’s. DIL was just 45 when they found her stage 4 BC. Then again she is not a bright bulb, when 1 nipple looks different than the other get your hind end into your doc NOW. Walnut size tumor and you didn’t feel it?
I felt those tiny pea size non cancer fatty knots when they showed up. I was at the doc’s the next day.
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