An anti-cancer vaccine, which uses a virus such as a Trojan horse to instruct the immune system to recognize cancer cells, can activate the immune response against the tumor and can improve the effectiveness of immunotherapy drugs.
This is what Armenise-Harvard immunoregulatory researchers discovered at the Italian Institute for Genomic Medicine (IIGM) based at the IRCCS Piedmont Foundation for Oncology in Candiolo, who also revealed the ways in which the vaccine works.
The discovery was illustrated in a study published in Science Translational Medicine and carried out in collaboration with the Swiss / Italian biotech Nouscom.
The vaccine has been shown to be effective, in combination with an immunotherapy drug, in 12 patients with a subtype of metastatic colon cancer.
"Considering that the technique for making these vaccines is decidedly tested and that the data obtained in the first clinical trial are very promising, there is a real possibility of creating new vaccines effective against many other types of cancer", said Luigia Pace, director of the Armenise-Harvard immunoregulation laboratory.