Scientists in the US have made a breakthrough in the search for more effective immunotherapeutic vaccines for cancer. They have turned tumor cells into cancer killers.
Investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a cancer vaccine that can eliminate established tumors and induce long-term immunity to prevent cancer recurrence. Scientists have been looking for ways to turn cancer cells into potent, anti-cancer agents. The research team from the lab of Khalid Shah at the Brigham has taken a huge leap forward in cancer vaccine research by developing a dual-action, cancer-killing vaccine, which has shown promising results against the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma in a lab study. The findings of their study were reported in Science Translational Medicine.
According to the investigators, they have engineered living tumor cells to develop a new therapeutic vaccine for cancer that not only eliminate established tumors but also trains the immune system to prevent cancer from recurring.
Turning tumor cells into cancer killers
Corresponding author Khalid Shah stated that they have worked on a simple idea, transforming cancer cells into cancer killers and vaccines. Shah is the director of the Center for Stem Cell and Translational Immunotherapy (CSTI).
“Using gene engineering, we are repurposing cancer cells to develop a therapeutic that kills tumor cells and stimulates the immune system to both destroy primary tumors and prevent cancer,” said Shah, as quoted by Science Daily.
While most labs working on cancer vaccines use inactivated tumor cells, Shah’s team repurposes living tumor cells instead. The advantage of using living tumor cells is that can travel long distances across the brain, they noted.
They have used the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to transform living tumor cells into tumor cell killing agent. Additionally, the engineered tumor cells were designed so that they can be easily remembered and spotted by the immune system, enabling a long-term anti-tumor response.
The vaccine may be used for wider range of tumors
Shah and his team tested their dual-action cell therapy (repurposed CRISPR-enhanced and reverse-engineered therapeutic tumor cells) in an advanced mouse model of the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma, and found safe, applicable, and efficacious.
They researchers believe that their therapeutic strategy would be applicable to a wider range of solid tumors. However, they noted that further investigations of its applications are necessary.
Other experimental cancer vaccines with promising results
Many other cancer vaccine candidates have shown promise in early clinical trials.
Last year, an experimental therapeutic cancer vaccine dubbed “vax-innate” had shown significant tumor regression in animal studies. Investigators from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), who developed the vaccine, said that intravenous (IV) administration of the vaccine can increase the number of T cells (which can attack tumor cells) and altering the tumor microenvironment.
In 2020, a Mater Research team based at The Translational Research Institute announced that they had successfully conducted preclinical trials of a cancer vaccine with the potential to fight a range of cancers, including leukaemia, breast cancer, lung cancer, ovarian and pancreatic cancers. They said that were ready to start trial the vaccine in humans.
Lead Researcher Associate Professor Kristen Radford had said that their vaccine has several key advantages over other cancer vaccine candidates. One is that it targets the key tumour cells required for the initiation of tumour-specific immune responses, which increases effectiveness and reduces side effects. Another main advantage id that the vaccine can also be produced as an ‘off the shelf’ clinical grade formulation.
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