Scientists from Albert Einstein College of Medicine found a way to make pancreatic tumors visible to the immune systems of mice and vulnerable to immune attack, reducing cancer metastases by 87%.
The research is published in Science Translational Medicine and was conducted by Claudia Gravekamp et al.
Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to cure or even treat. Today’s checkpoint inhibitor drugs work well against some types of cancer but only rarely help people with pancreatic cancer.
The problem is those pancreatic tumors aren’t sufficiently ‘foreign’ to attract the immune system’s attention and can usually suppress whatever immune responses do occur.
In the study, the new treatment strategy capitalizes on the fact that virtually all people are vaccinated in childhood against tetanus, a serious disease caused by a toxic protein that Clostridiumbacteria secrete.
Thanks to their tetanus-specific memory T cells, which circulate in the bloodstream for life, vaccinated people will mount a strong immune response if they’re later exposed to the highest foreign tetanus toxin.
The team effectively aroused a potent and specific immune response against pancreatic cancer cells by infecting them with bacteria that deliver tetanus toxin into the cells.
The team says the Listeria bacteria are quite weak and are readily killed off by the immune systems of people and animals—everywhere, that is, except in tumor areas.
The new treatment strategy actually takes advantage of the fact that pancreatic tumors are so good at suppressing the immune system to protect themselves.
The treatment shrank the size of the pancreatic tumors by an average of 80% and also significantly reduced the number of metastases by 87%, while the treated animals lived 40% longer than untreated (control) animals.
The findings indicate that this treatment approach could be useful immunotherapy for pancreatic cancer as well as other types of cancer, such as ovarian cancer.
If you care about pancreatic cancer, please read studies about new vaccine to prevent pancreatic cancer, and this new drug combo may help treat pancreatic cancer.
For more information about cancer, please see recent studies about drug combo that may stop spread of cancer, and results showing this drug could cut cancer death by 20%.
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