In conversation with La W, oncologist Catherine Wu, who works at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, United States, spoke about her research to develop personalized cancer vaccines.
It should be noted that this project earned him the 2024 Sjöberg Prize, which is aimed at individuals or research groups that have made significant contributions to cancer research.
In that sense, Dr. Wu, who has experience in pioneering research in this field, spoke about how close science is to achieving a cancer vaccine: “For now, only the clinical trial is available. To make it available to the general public, much larger studies are needed, as well as results from studies on a larger population. “It will take a few more years.”
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In this way, the oncologist assured that, in the meantime, certain improvements are expected in different areas, such as the manufacturing of the vaccine, so that it can be available to everyone.
On the other hand, when asked if this personalized vaccine works on all types of cancer, the oncologist explained that there are different types of tumors for different types of cancer: “One person can have one cancer and another person can have a different version of the same cancer.” . Each tumor has different mutations (…) the vaccine is designed to attack these mutations.”
Regarding the requirements that the population that is part of the clinical trials must meet, Dr. Wu explained that each test has different criteria. Therefore, in general terms, information from the tumor cells and the DNA sequence is needed to find specific mutations. In addition, blood tests are required to determine the immune system information that allows each person’s code to be deciphered.
On the other hand, regarding the idea behind the development of a vaccine against cancer, the oncologist assured that science has been behind this possibility for years. For this reason, she assured that the idea of protecting the immune system originates from the evidence that a change in DNA could have an immune response, a fact that is evident when a person receives a transplant due to the differences between the donor and the receptor.
“It has always been thought that these mutations in tumors can stimulate an immune response and before there was no way to discover that sequence in the tumor. Now that we can do it, we have a better understanding of the tumor and a safe approach to treating cancer by understanding the different sequence of each person,” the scientist replied.
They develop vaccines that could cure cancer: Catherine Wu talks about the research
2024-02-28 14:42:25
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