Can flu vaccines help in the war against cancer?

Researchers say that the injection of the vaccine causes cancerous tumors to respond better to treatments that stimulate the body's immune system and cause it to attack the cancerous tumor. Surprisingly, the researchers also found that lung cancer patients with the flu have lived longer than patients who have not contracted the virus

Can flu vaccines help in the war against cancer?

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A new study, conducted at various medical centers in the US, found that injecting the flu vaccine into cancerous tumors, altering the tumor environment and making them respond well to immunotherapy considered one of the advanced oncology treatments. Researchers also found that lung cancer patients who had the flu virus once or more During their illness, they lived longer than patients who did not contract the virus at all during their illness.

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Immunotherapy is a treatment that stimulates the immune system to attack the cancerous cells. However, many patients do not respond to immunotherapy because their cancerous tumors are not permeable to this treatment ("cold" tumors). In order to produce "warm" tumors that respond well to immunotherapy, the microenvironment of the tumors must be changed to contain certain immune system cells - CD8 + T cells, which respond easily to immunotherapy.

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The researchers, whose work was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, rested on the fact that the immune system tends to respond well to foreign antigen, producing a weak response against self-antigen, such as a tumor. It is an immune system survival mechanism designed to prevent autoimmune damage to the body, but it actually allows cancerous tumors to outperform the immune system many times and prevent it from attacking and destroying it.

The next phase of vaccines? Man vaccinated against flu (Photo: shutterstock)

Man vaccinated against flu (Photo: ShutterStock)

Previous studies have shown that pneumonia caused by influenza virus causes the migration of CD8 + T cells from the skin to the lungs, reducing the immune response across the skin and increasing the risk of melanoma skin cancer. The researchers in the present study relied on these findings, which implanted melanoma cells in mouse lung tissue. And injected through the nose an active influenza virus to reach the lung. The result was a significant reduction in healthy melanoma cells.

To determine whether these findings are clinically relevant, data from a medical database of over 30,000 lung cancer patients were reviewed. It was found that among patients who were hospitalized once or more due to influenza virus while also being lung cancer patients, there was a reduction in cancer mortality or for any reason. This figure is consistent with the results observed in mice. It is important to note that for 25 percent of patients with one or more hospitalizations due to influenza virus during the period when they battled lung cancer, the 12-month mortality rate was deferred and the mortality time for any reason was postponed by 19 months.

In addition, the researchers investigated the effect of PDL-1 protein, whose role is to inhibit immune control points, and its high presence enables the success of immunotherapy, to the effect of the flu vaccine on cancer cells. The researchers injected the mouse skin with an inactive influenza virus, which increased the presence of immune system CD8 + T cells within the melanoma tumor, resulting in a small increase in the tumor and an extension of the mouse survival time.

Combining inactivated influenza virus injection with PDL-1 protein injection resulted in a reduction of more than 74 percent, compared with injection of the virus separately or the DPL-1 protein alone, which reduced only about 40 percent of the tumor. The researchers note that this is of clinical importance and to test this, tumors of human patients as well as peripheral blood cells carrying immune cells have been implanted in mice. They also showed the same results, and the researchers concluded that the results could be translated into cancer treatments in humans.