Nipping it in the bud: A new type of cancer therapy
Few diseases carry a name as heavy as cancer does — the mere idea of it is enough to inspire notions of finality for many. Despite our best efforts and our medical prowess, which has given us a plethora of cures to some of the most inexorable of diseases, cancer has remained the immovable object. Not only that, cancer is also extremely common and deeply pervasive; every person is able to name at least one other person who has suffered from some shape or form of the illness.
Throughout history, cancer has always been known as incurable. Ancient Egyptian medical texts hold extensive quantities of cures and treatments for every disease that their physicians have observed, but the entry for cancer was simply marked with the hieroglyphics for “incurable.” Cancer also stumped Ancient Greek physicians, historically remembered as the pioneers of modern medicine.
Similarly, much of our modern techniques like chemotherapy are able to chemically beat cancer into remission only for it to recur months or years later.
Fortunately, a relatively new field of medicine, precision medicine, is able to shine some much-needed light and hope upon cancer medicine and research. Cancer immunotherapy is nothing new, but due to improvements in our technique and better knowledge of the human immune system and its relation to cancer, researchers have been able to make major strides towards not just pushing cancer into remission, but preventing it from even taking hold in the first place.
Dr. Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez, an assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Cancer Prevention at the University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center, and other researchers, are heading ambitious projects that exploit the presence of specific antigens on pre-cancerous cells to effectively destroy them before they can start wreaking havoc on the body.
Cancer cells are like any other cell — they divide and proliferate and operate on physiological processes common to all cells. Cancer cells also express a wide variety of proteins on their surface, many of which are unique to cell type and more importantly, cancer type.
Some of these proteins are expressed reliably, while others not so much. A large majority of prior research into immunotherapy (as well as many active immunotherapy regimens) focus on goading the body’s immune system into attacking cells after they’ve already become cancerous and started causing carnage by using a specific set of antigens.
However, the therapy — actually more akin to a vaccine — that Vilar-Sanchez is investigating employs a wide range of possible antigens, more than 200 possible surface proteins alongside inhibitors of cellular division, to effectively prevent cancer cells from even beginning to replicate.
So far, his research has shown great promise — in a clinical trial of 12 patients with dMMR/MSI-H tumors (tumors that arise from genetic instability and genomic damage), seven patients demonstrated a significant and measurable reduction in tumor size.
Due to the efficacy and precision of this therapy, Vilar-Sanchez has moved to applying his new technique in a more preventative angle.
“Can we apply checkpoint inhibitors or checkpoint inhibitor strategies to prevent MMR-deficient colorectal cancer?” Vilar-Sanchez asked in a press release concerning possible future direction for his research.
While some researchers use powerful and broad tactics to ensure that cancer cannot take root, others take it in a similar but smaller-scale direction. In a study led by Dr. Beatriz M. Carreno, Research Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, researchers explored the potential of using a neo-antigen (a surface-protein fragment formed during cell development) to deliver a targeted treatment to kill pancreatic cancer cells.
While the study wasn’t completely effective in killing off cancer cells (being able to only push and keep tumors at a manageable size), the immune response that it produced outweighed its lower efficacy. The neo-antigen vaccine was overwhelmingly successful in producing an immune response that integrated the neo-antigen into the host’s repertoire of antigens and antibodies, meaning that the vaccine was unequivocally successful in being “personalized” to its recipient.
“We’ve shown that targeting mutant KRAS immunologically is feasible and potentially generalizable for a group of patients with lung, colorectal, and pancreatic tumors,” Carreno said in a press release about her research, citing its efficacy and versatility in its interactions with the immune system. “We look forward to taking this research to the next level and closer to clinical study.”
“It really amazes me how far biotechnological research has come and how using these unorthodox methods has allowed us to see something previously intractable as manageable,” Dr. Andrea Tilden, the Leslie Brainerd Arey Associate Professor of Biosciences at Colby College, said when asked about these new breakthrough advancements. “I’m very hopeful for the future of this kind of research, and it truly makes me happy to know that some of the brightest minds are devoting their efforts to bring their work to fruition.”
The potential of precision medicine to give patients a normal life free of painful medical procedures and constant worry is much too great to ignore, and it’s important that we devote our efforts not just to perfecting prior solutions, but also to formulating new ways to address all-too-familiar problems.
As with all ungovernable diseases, finding a cure or even an effective treatment can be a long and arduous process rife with setbacks and confusion. As such, it’s necessary to analyze the situation from multiple angles and employ novel means to attack it to get a well-rounded solution, as with these new treatments, and most importantly, to keep looking forwards and to embrace the unconventional.
~ Dimitri Lin `25
