On Bloomberg this morning13 May 2024 12:18
fighting cancer with layered ‘onions’
renowned sydney cancer pathologist richard scolyer was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most common brain malignancy in adults, last june. the disease is notoriously lethal, and the survival benefit of standard treatment dismal. scolyer gave himself nine months to live — at best.
then his longtime collaborator, oncologist georgina long, used their pioneering melanoma research to devise an experimental treatment for scolyer’s cancer. it’s based on a ****tail of immunotherapy drugs and a personalized cancer vaccine, which i wrote about back in october.
today, scolyer is still going strong, and his tumor has shown no sign of returning. he and long were named australians of the year in january.
since then, advances in treating brain cancer using different forms of immunotherapy — car-t, which uses engineered t-cells, and a messenger rna-based therapeutic vaccine — have generated more buzz.
researchers at the university of florida opened an early-stage trial of an experimental vaccine that showed promise in a study published in the journal cell earlier this month.
the vaccine is based on the same technology that went into the covid shots made by moderna and the pfizer-biontech se partnership. but instead of priming the immune system to recognize the coronavirus spike protein, the vaccine that elias sayour, a pediatric cancer specialist at the university of florida, developed uses multiple layers of mrna extracted from the genetic material of a patient’s brain tumor.
particles are packed into an onion-like structure that resembles a dangerous virus and infused into the bloodstream, alerting the immune system to attack and kill cancer cells in the brain bearing the same features. sayour likens it to administering a microscopic “bag full of onions.”
“these clusters alert the immune system in a much more profound way than single particles would,” he said.
within 48 hours of starting treatment, tumors were seen shifting from a “cold” state — as though they were frozen out of the immune system’s reach — to being “hot” and driving robust immune activity.
the research was initially studied in lab mice, then in 10 pet dogs with terminal brain cancer, before being tested in four glioblastoma patients.
the experiments demonstrated increased survivorship across different models of cancer. now, an expanded clinical trial involving up to 24 adult and pediatric patients aims to validate the findings.
once an optimal, safe dose is established, around two dozen children with brain cancer will be enrolled in a mid-stage study, sayour said.
the novel vaccine can be adapted to deliver different payloads to manipulate the immune system across diseases. besides patients with recurrent glioblastoma, sayour and colleagues are looking into testing the approach in children with bone cancer and adults with melanoma.
“we see this as a new platform techno
Sign In
Follow the stocks
