Unfortunately, we all most likely know at least one person who has suffered from cancer. The scary disease of Cancer causes a great amount of deaths world-wide due to the uncontrolled division a patient’s cells undergo. A tumor develops as a result of this uncontrolled cell division and, if cancerous, can lead to further inconvenient, costly, and life-threatening concerns. According to a recent article published by Cancer Treatment Centers of America, cancer is not necessarily categorized as an autoimmune disease. Cancer is usually a result of the immune system not properly doing its job of eliminating harmful cells while an autoimmune disease results from the immune system falsely attacking healthy cells. Either way, both cancer and autoimmune diseases lead to fatal consequences for the individual. The good news is that cancer treatment and autoimmune disease research has skyrocketed over the past century with scientists now able to pinpoint the exact cause and possible effective treatments or preventions of cancer.
According to an article by the American Cancer Society, different methods of treating cancer including vaccines are currently being studied. While vaccination is not currently considered a treatment for cancer, researchers have been able to pin-point what should be included in a cancer vaccine. The article specifically mentions four specific types of possibly effective cancer vaccines: Tumor Cell Vaccines, Antigen Vaccines, Dendritic Cell Vaccines, and Vector-based Vaccines. All these types aim to defeat cancerous tumors by either introducing one type of antigen, or removing and altering actual cancer cells from the patient then reintroducing them to the body. The most effective one, as noted by the article, is the Dendritic Cell Vaccine. As we discussed in class, dendritic cells are cells in the immune system that detect cancerous cells and “flag” them for an immune response to occur. This vaccine essentially works by exposing dendritic cells to cancer cells in a lab setting, then when DCs are injected into the patient, they cause a healthy immune response rapidly and efficiently. This process, as effective as it is, is noted to be very costly. It required the extraction of dendritic/immune cells from the specific patient, which is obviously a process. Another downside to this is that it has only been approved to treat prostate cancer. The reason why it is most effective against this type of cancer as oppose to any other was not mentioned in this article, but I assume there is a valid reasoning behind this. Nevertheless, there is hope. In the next few years, we will hopefully defeat cancer altogether!
Ovarian cancer vaccine overview from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-personalized-ovarian-cancer-vaccine-trial.html
Microbiology for Smarties 