New approach may give hope to cancer patients

NST: A novel approach to cancer treatment will be undertaken for the first time in Malaysia.
Cancer vaccines which mobilise the immune system to target malignant cancer cells have been developed by the Centre of Molecular Immunology (CIM) in Cuba.
This new approach, as opposed to traditional treatments which target the cancerous cells themselves, has been carried out on lung cancer patients with great success by CIM which has been developing the vaccines for the last 10 years.
Head of CIM, cancer vaccine specialist Dr Gisela Gonzalez, who is in Malaysia to design the protocol for the second phase of the clinical trial with a group of local oncologists and clinical researchers, said that clinical trials carried out in two phases in Cuba, Canada and the United Kingdom have resulted in double life expectancy for patients who responded to the vaccine.
"The clinical trials carried out have demonstrated that 70 per cent of patients vaccinated develop specific antibodies that target known cancer cell proliferation agents," she said.
Cell proliferation agents - the EGF (Epidermal Growth Factor), TGF (Transdermal Growth Factor) and Her-1 (Herceptin) - normally bind themselves to direct cells to multiply. However, in cancer cells, this process becomes unregulated, resulting in uncontrolled cell multiplication or proliferation.
Dr Gonzalez said that some patients who responded to the vaccine have lived for up to three to four years as opposed to the five to seven months diagnosed before taking the vaccine.
"This is significant because most lung cancer patients at such stages are terminal cases who do not usually live beyond a few months."
She said that unlike chemotherapy, the vaccinations do not affect the patients' immune system, therefore patients experience a better quality of life in their final years.
In some cases, the size of cancerous tumours have also been reduced. In one patient, the tumour completely disappeared.