ASH: Vaccines

More from the American Societyof Hematology (ASH) conference, which meets next week: an abstract on research on lymphoma vaccines, from researchers at Stanford.


The presentation is called "Adoptive Cell Therapy for Lymphoma: Use of CpG-Loaded Tumor Cells to Generate Potent Anti-Tumor CD4 T Cell Immunity." As the title implies, the researchers are trying a type of treatment called Adoptive Cell Therapy (ACT). ACT is used on a bunch of different cancers, not just lymphomas. It works by removing T-cells (which attack invaders) from a patient, and then using chemo to kill off the remaining T-cells in the body. In the meantime, the most aggressive of the T-cells that have been removed are identified and multiplied in the lab (ex vivo), and then put back into the patient, usually with something that will help them grow and identify and kill off the cancer cells. What makes this research different from other typs of ACT is that they do not make the cells grow outside the body in the lab, but inside the body (in vivo), and they use a particular substance that allows the T-cells to hook on to multiple sites on the cancer cell. They've only tried this approach on mice, but have had excellent results so far. Their two variations seem to overcome a couple of problems often found in ACT: the reintroduced T-cells tend to work only short-term, and they usually are created to hook onto only one site on a cancer cell. Very promising.


I'm particularly fascinated by vaccines, as I've written before, probably because the lymphoma specialist I saw at Yale seemed so excited by them. In theory, they should work very well, but in practice, researchers still can't quite get them right. The more I read about them, the more it seems like researchers are kind of chipping away at the problems, a little at a time. Each attempt seems to reveal a new problem that needs to be dealt with, but it means they're getting close. (Like those old Christmas tree light strings -- test each bulb to figure out which one isn't working, and eventually you'll find get it all to light up.)

But they're getting there....