Ernest Levy joined an early-stage clinical trial led by the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, testing a cancer vaccine for acute myeloid leukemia…Now results from the trial suggest that the vaccine was able to stimulate powerful immune responses against cancer cells and protect a majority of patients from relapse—including Levy.
Out of 17 patients with an average age of 63 who received the vaccine, 12 are still in remission four years or more after receiving the vaccine, [David Avigan, chief of Hematological Malignancies and director of the Cancer Vaccine Program at Beth Israel] reported.
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Avigan and his colleagues created a personalized vaccine by taking leukemia cells from patients and then freezing them for preservation while they received a traditional chemotherapy. Then scientists thawed the cancer cells and combined them with dendritic cells, immune cells that unleash tumor-fighting T cells.
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Though the number of patients in the trial was small, Avigan says, “this was enough of a provocative finding” that the researchers will be expanding the trial to include more patients. At the same time, the personalized vaccine approach is already being tested in other types of cancers.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Personalized Cancer Vaccine Prevents Leukemia Relapse in Patients
