Can prevent brain cancer by vaccine

Brain area with cancer.(Photo: healthabc)

People with glioma, the most dangerous type of brain cancer, can be treated with a vaccine derived from the patient's own proteins.

People with glioma only live about 6 months and a half since the tumor formed. The most commonly used measure now is to remove the tumor. With the new vaccine, the most dangerous form of brain cancer can become a chronic disease, not a fatal one.

A team of experts at the University of California (USA) conducted research on 6 volunteers. They all had glioma and had an average age of 60. Researchers removed the tumors of the volunteers. But instead of throwing them away, they sent them to biotech company Antigenics in Massachusetts.

Antigenics experts have extracted a protein called " heat shock " from cancer cells. This is a protein that helps cells fight high temperatures from the outside environment. In cancer cells, this protein also carries peptides - tumor-causing molecules.

Every 2 weeks, each patient is given a " heat shock " protein taken from their own brain tumor. The work was conducted from January this year.

Brain cancer cells.(Photo: alternative-cancers)

One person died after 5 months of treatment. However, the remaining 5 people are still alive. In fact, they have lived for more than a year since being diagnosed with cancer, longer than the average of 6 months. Even people do not detect any tumors in one of them.

Andrew Parsa, the lead researcher, said that the vaccine made from the protein in the tumor helped five others survive.

He said vaccines helped cancer-causing peptide molecules come into contact with cells throughout the body. After detecting this exposure, the immune system attacked cancer cells in the brain. Blood samples from patients showed that the vaccine created immune cells to cancer.

"The results are interesting in that it proves that we can make the immune system react to cancer-causing peptide molecules, something that has never happened before," Parsa said.

He also added that injecting protein from cancer cells also works for kidney cancer and skin cancer.

Minh Quan