Vaccine News

M.D. Anderson Cancer Center issued a press release a couple of days ago touting the results of a phase III clinical trial for a follicular lymphoma vaccine. They are (justifiably) calling it a success: it added about 14 months to pateints' remissions before they relapsed.

Fourteen months might seem like not a long time, but as the lead researcher pointed out, most new treatments are approved for use only because they add two or three months. So, when you look at the big picture, this is a big deal.

I've been fascinated by lymphoma vaccines for a while; the specialist I saw just after I was diagnosed told me about them, very excitedly. In the almost three and a half years since then, vaccine studies have produced some mixed results. They sound great in theory: give the patient some of his own lymphoma cells that have been manipulated in a way that makes them override whatever it is that makes the cancer cells fool the immune system. It seems, though, like every failure reveals something new that will help the next attempt work even better.

The vaccine described in the press release was developed by a team led by Dr. Larry Kwak; he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people last year. As he explains, these vaccines must be personalized, since each patient's lymphoma will be just a little different. Which may explain why some patients in the study with a certain protein marker achieved even better results.

The method Kwak and his team used might even be adapted for other types of cancer.

Since this is a phase III study, it is likely that the vaccine will be put through for approved use at some point soon. The problem, of course, will be price: because each individual patient needs to get his own personalized vaccine made, it takes a lot of time, and costs a lot of money. Maybe that will be another next step: figuring out how to do it not only better, but faster and cheaper, too.