Personalised drugs could revolutionise the war on cancer

A NEW treatment that effectively gives a personal treatment for cancer has been found by scientists.

It harnesses the power of the body’s immune system and targets it at tumours. Early experiments have demonstrated that the new method could revolutionise cancer care.

Scientists have found a system of priming the body’s immune system to recognise, attack and kill off cancerous cells in lung, skin and bowel tumours.

The team which carried out the research found that early trials ‘profoundly retarded’ tumour growth in mice.

Survival rates were boosted by more than 50 per cent, according to results published in the journal Nature last night.

The scientists are now recruiting patients with skin cancer for the first clinical trial on humans.

British experts said it is the most promising sign yet that ‘personal’ treatments may be effective in treating a wide range of cancers.

Until now most cancer drugs have been designed according to the type of tumour they are attacking - a broad-brush approach in which the type of drug is selected depending on the body part in which the tumour is sited.

But the new focus on personal cancer therapy instead aims to harness each individual’s immune sys- tem and give it a boost depending on the genetic make-up of the tumour itself.

The ground-breaking technique may provide a universal blueprint for vaccines that can target a wide range of human cancers.

And it overcomes the problem of cancer presenting an ever-moving target that constantly evolves to evade the immune system.

Scientists last night welcomed the German team’s breakthrough.

Professor Kevin Harrington, from the Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: ‘This study provides the first evidence that we may be on the threshold of being able to produce individualised vaccines directed against specific mutations present in a patient’s tumour.

‘Rapid production of purpose- built vaccines appears possible and can now be tested in carefully designed clinical trials.

‘As yet, this approach must be seen as experimental but it poten- tially represents a new way of harnessing the power of the immune system against cancer.’

The scientists, led by Dr Ugur Sahin of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, identified tumourspecific mutations linked to the different cancers and showed that many of them could be recognised by the body’s immune system.

They then created vaccines based on the body’s own RNA – a genetic messenger - which encouraged the immune system to direct itself towards the weakest part of the tumour. The treatment was shown to boost the body’s T-cells, which detect, hunt down and destroy cancer cells.

Of the mice treated, two-thirds were alive after 100 days. Of those that did not receive treatment all died within 65 days. When repeated vaccinations were administered, ‘tumour growth was profoundly retarded’, the authors wrote.

Professor Peter Johnson, from the Cancer Research UK Centre at Southampton General Hospital, said: ‘ This technique provides the first evidence that it may be possible to direct the immune system to fight cancer using personalised vaccines.’

Power of the immune system