Sep 3, 2008 5:42 pm US/Eastern
Researchers Look To Vaccines To Fight Cancer
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ―
Colon cancer kills more than 600,000 people worldwide. To stop this deadly disease, doctors at the University of Pittsburgh are trying to think outside the box.
Instead of focusing on traditional chemotherapy, they're looking at some things you wouldn't necessarily think of as cancer fighters -- vaccines and a virus.
Vaccines have been a cancer-fighting concept for a number of years. The idea is to teach the immune system to fight the disease.
"We actually take a little bit of the patient's cancer and put it in with these white blood cells," explains Dr. Herbert Zeh III of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.
Research there is trying something new with these white blood cells, an important part of the immune system, now trained to combat the cancer. "We deliver them into the lymphatic system of the patient." The lymphatic system carries fluid through the tissues and makes certain immune cells. Dr. Zeh hopes the research shows the white blood cells work better in the lymphatic system than in the bloodstream.
Dr. Zeh is even more excited about putting a virus to good use. "This is an approach that is different from any other kinds of chemotherapies, or immune therapies, or even vaccines that we've done in the past."
His team has changed the virus used to wipe out small pox so that it attacks only colon cancer cells.
Of course, the possibility of infection is a concern that came up before all the research regulatory boards -- but so far, that hasn't been an issue.
"There are sometimes side effects that we aren't able to predict, but we're hopeful based on ten years of testing, both in animals and in the laboratory, in the test tube, that this is something that is really going to help down the road, though it's really too soon to know for sure," Dr. Zeh says.
Both of these trials are for people whose cancer has come back after getting the standard treatments for colon cancer. Both trials are also still in the early stages, where testing is mostly to check for safety.
Later, if the early results are good, larger studies will be done to look for effectiveness. It still may be many years before we get there.
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