A Cure FROM What Ails You?

Dartmouth study uses patient's tumor to form vaccine

(RxWiki News) A personalized vaccine may become a vital component to helping patients with colorectal cancer develop an immune response against their own tumors.

A new process to developing a personalized vaccine known as the dendritic cell (DC) vaccine, developed at Dartmouth, was used after surgical resection of metastatic tumors to try to prevent the growth of additional metastases. Findings can be found in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

“The results of the study suggest a new way to approach cancer treatment," said Richard Barth Jr., MD, the study’s lead investigator and chief of general surgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

Dendritic cells, which are critical to the human body's immune system, help identify antigens and stimulate the immune system to react against those antigens. The research team grew dendritic cells from a sample of a patient's blood, mixed them with proteins from the patient's tumor and injected the mixture into the patient as a vaccine. In response, the vaccine stimulated an anti-tumor response from T-cells, a white blood cell that protects the body from disease.

Review Date: 
November 28, 2010