Vaccines Improve Host In Breast Cancer

BY BARBARA MCCONNELL, Louisiana Medican News, Feb 2007

According to Robert L. Elliott, MD, PhD, autologous vaccines improve host immunity in breast cancer patients.

At a continuing education meeting in November of the CME Committee of Acadiana in Lafayette, Elliott gave a lecture and presentation on the results of an ongoing study at the Elliott-Elliott-Head Breast Cancer Research and Treatment Center in Baton Rouge. He discussed emerging research in immunotherapy and the use of host protein vaccines for the treatment of breast cancer. In following patients with this disease, he stated that he had felt for quite some time that their own immunity plays an important part in breast cancer survival, and is largely ignored in current regimes.

“Major advances in cellular and molecular immunology have allowed an understanding of the complex and high rate of interaction between the immune system and tumor cells,” explained Elliott. “If we can disturb the microenvironment of the tumor, we can go forward with treatment.”

The idea is to take cancer cells from the patient’s own tumor and grow them in the lab, and then develop a vaccine for scheduled reinjections back into that patient for his or her own individualized fight against cancer.

In a population of 104 patients, all but 17 had enough cells to grow out in the lab, which made 84 percent of them candidates for a vaccine. In 16 of those patients with stage IV breast cancer, two were disease free with recurrence 11 to 14 months later, and seven were stabilized for six to 55 months; seven patients had no change and their disease progressed.

Elliott concluded that to design an effective cancer vaccine, doctors need to know how to identify potent tumor rejection antigens, stimulate an effective anti-tumor immune response, avoid autoimmune pathology and prevent immune evasion.

Current treatment centers focus on surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Where chemo is imprecise, a person’s own “vaccine” would be highly specific and hopefully well tolerated, allowing doctors to personalize each patient’s therapy. Elliott believes the future will undoubtedly include vaccine therapy as part of the mix along with other modalities

Cancer immunotherapy was initiated more than a century ago with William Coley’s toxin in 1891 for sarcomas. Radiation therapy became popular and bumped cancer vaccines out of the limelight. Now there are FDA-approved immunotherapies for bladder cancer (Bacillus-Calmette-Guerin), and some cervical cancers (Gardasil®), as well as the use of cytokines interleukin and interferon, and eight monoclonal antibodies. However, breast cancer vaccines are in the early stage of development and none are FDA approved.