Vaccination Offers New Hope for Asbestos Cancer Treatment
Asbestos treatment plans are evolving as victims are just recently beginning to emerge in large numbers. The workers who inhaled the hazardous fiber decades ago are not only seeing that exposure manifest as lung cancer. As the number of these cancer sufferers continues to escalate, so does the search for cures. While certain methods (such as surgery and chemotherapy) have and will continue to be staples of asbestos cancer treatments, new treatment methods have arisen as a result of clinical trials and research. One such method, dendritic cell vaccination, could offer renewed hope for sufferers of all types of cancer, including lung cancer and mesothelioma.
A diagnosis of mesothelioma can be devastating news to patients and their loved ones. The disease is almost always fatal, and often within a short time after diagnosis. Surgery remains the primary treatment method, but is not always effective. Mesothelioma progresses slowly and may not be diagnosed until it has reached a late stage of development, when surgery will no longer be effective. Chemotherapy is therefore another key treatment option for patients with mesothelioma.
But even these staples are often not enough to cure the disease. Dutch researchers have therefore been exploring a new method of treatment: dendritic cell vaccination. Dendritic cells are a natural component of the immune system that are responsible for searching out any foreign proteins that enter the body. When mixed with genetic material from a cancerous tumor, dendritic cells can be utilized as a vaccine. In this capacity, they can work to call out a tumor for the immune system so that the body’s white blood cells know to destroy it.
This asbestos treatment method is still very new in mesothelioma. But Dutch researchers have discovered some promising data in patients receiving dendritic cell vaccination after or along with chemotherapy. The researchers detected an immune response by the bodies of patients who had mesothelioma and were given dendritic cells. They found similar results in mice treated with dendritic cells. The treated mice experienced a strong immunological response that targeted tumors and prolonged their lives.
Dendritic cell vaccination falls into a category of treatment termed “immunotherapy.” Many new treatments and treatment methods are arising from this category. The idea in immunotherapy is to trigger the body’s own immune system to specifically target and then destroy cancerous cells.
The Dutch researchers tested their new treatment on a group of 10 recently-diagnosed patients. All received standard chemotherapy, but only four showed stable disease following this treatment. The other six showed only a partial response. Following the chemotherapy, all 10 patients received three dendritic cell vaccinations spaced at two-week intervals. The vaccines contained dendritic cells plus cells from the tumors of each patient.
The results were promising. All the patients were able to tolerate the treatment with minimal adverse side effects. None needed dose changes or reductions. All patients also showed a significant increase in antibodies, proteins that are present in the immune system and seek out foreign materials to identify and then destroy them. The researchers cautioned that these results are preliminary and could possibly be attributed to a delayed response by the patients to chemotherapy, but the results are nonetheless encouraging. Further studies will be necessary to determine the survival rates of patients receiving this type of therapy. However, doctors, patients and researchers are already looking to dendritic cell vaccination as a hopeful new treatment for not just mesothelioma, but all types of cancer.
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