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Medicine Science

Vaccine Shown To Prolong Life of Patients With Aggressive Brain Cancer (theguardian.com) 69

Posted by BeauHD from the first-of-its-kind dept.
The world's first vaccine to treat deadly cancerous brain tumors can potentially give patients years of extra life, a global clinical trial has concluded. The Guardian reports: A senior NHS doctor who was one of the trial's chief investigators said the evidence showed DCVax had resulted in "astonishing" enhanced survival for patients. One patient in the 331-person multicenter global study lived for more than eight years after receiving DCVax. In Britain, 53-year-old Nigel French is still alive seven years after having it. If approved by medical regulators, DCVax would be the first new treatment in 17 years for newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients and the first in 27 years for people in whom it had returned. "The total results are astonishing," said Prof Keyoumars Ashkan, a neurosurgeon at King's College hospital in London who was the European chief investigator of the trial. "The final results of this phase three trial... offer fresh hope to patients battling with glioblastoma."

Trial researchers found that newly diagnosed patients who had the vaccine survived for 19.3 months on average, compared with 16.5 months for those who received a placebo. Participants with recurrent glioblastoma who had had DCVax lived on average for 13.2 months after receiving it, compared with just 7.8 months for those who did not. Overall 13% of people who received it lived for at least five years after diagnosis, while just 5.7% of those in the control group did so, according to the results of the trial, which were published on Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Oncology.

The vaccine is a form of immunotherapy, in which the body's immune system is programmed to track down and attack the tumor. It is the first developed to tackle brain tumors. "The vaccine works by stimulating the patient's own immune system to fight against the patient's tumor. It provides a personalized solution, working with a patient's immune system, which is the most intelligent system known to man," said Ashkan. "The vaccine is produced by combining proteins from a patient's own tumor with their white blood cells. This educates the white cells to recognize the tumor. "When the vaccine is administered, these educated white blood cells then help the rest of the patient's immune system recognize the tumor as something it needs to fight against and destroy. Almost like training a sniffer dog."
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Vaccine Shown To Prolong Life of Patients With Aggressive Brain Cancer More

Vaccine Shown To Prolong Life of Patients With Aggressive Brain Cancer

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  • Feels like it is just the first half of the puzzle (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:26AM (#63060286) Homepage Journal

    Saying that it can give patients years of extra life is something of an exaggeration. A tiny number of patients lived years longer than expected. The average was just two or three extra months. That's a small enough difference that with only 331 people in the trial group, there's a real possibility that a larger study would show regression to the mean, i.e. this might not even do anything at all except in rare fluke cases.

    The thing is, glioblastoma is a seriously problematic target for immunotherapy (or any other kind of therapy, for that matter) because of the blood-brain barrier. It apparently exists at the boundary of the BBB, so some cancer cells can potentially be killed off, but others are unlikely to be reached by either chemotherapy or immune cells. My gut says that fully disrupting the BBB in and around the tumor is likely to be critical to taking this from a "this gives you a couple more months" treatment to something that actually gives a real chance at beating the disease.

    I really do wish more studies on these sorts of diseases would include experiment arms in which they deliberately disrupt the BBB with focused ultrasound to see if it results in the treatments becoming more effective. It seems like that should literally be a part of the base trial protocol for approximately anything involving the brain and immune system.

    • Let's not paint it too dark. I had a friend die of Glioblastoma, it's brutal with 100% death rate guaranteed (and you're a vegetable a long time before death too) - something that's not indicated by a "average survival duration" in the article. My understanding (and I admit, I'm no expert) is that with this treatment, the survival rate drops to zero in a small number of years (i.e. a lot less than 7 or 8). My friend lasted 9 months from first symptoms and that was with brain surgery the other highly aggress
      • My personal experience with Glioblastoma (Uncle) doesn't really match yours.

        His survival rate was not 0%, and he was not a vegetable prior to death.
        He was bedridden though- mostly because he could suffer sudden irrecoverable falls which started becoming dangerous to his health.

        My uncle lasted 14 months after diagnosis (which came after 2 falls in short succession down their stairs), and the tumor was inoperable.

        What can be taken from the study, is that your chances of making it 5+ years is about doub
        • Regards your uncle - maybe the location in the brain of the cancer has an impact? My friend must have had it in a part of the brain that somehow was more susceptible - he lost his ability to think quite quick. Sad thing was he was something like mid thirties with 3 young daughters (the youngest was still a baby), rough fall of the dice for sure.

          I agree with the final points you make there. Double the chance of 5 years + is certainly going to be a big thing.

          • maybe the location in the brain of the cancer has an impact?

            I imagine it must.

            My friend must have had it in a part of the brain that somehow was more susceptible

            I'm no neurosurgeon, but it's not hard to imagine that a mass growing in one part of the brain could have a very different lethality timeline and profile than another.

            My uncle was not in his mid 30s, he was in his late 50s.
            Still too young, but better than mid 30s.

            Fuck cancer.

        • What can be taken from the study, is that your chances of making it 5+ years is about double that of normal (which is ~6%)
          Anyone staring down the barrel of that gun is going to jump on that deal. I know my uncle would have.

          No doubt!

          And rest assured, every single idiot complaining about "Averages" would be first line to do whatever was necessary to receive this Treatment for themselves or their loved ones, even if it only offered the slimmest of chances for the shortest of times.

      • Yeah I lost a friend to it as well. Miserable way to go. She was one of the most brilliant women I know, engineer with an incredibly sharp mind and wit, so it was a cruel fate that it was her brain that the cancer went after.

        Even if this only buys someone 6 months to a year, if someones got a remaining lifespan measured in months ,thats still significant. If it can turn it into a 7+ year thing, well thats straight up miraculous.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by laxguy ( 1179231 )

        Lost my mom to it in January 2022 - diagnosed September 2020, surgery a few months later, straight to chemo and radiation. The surgery removed most or all of the tumor and she was in decent shape, she could still talk and remember things, get around the house and generally take care of herself. In comes the chemo and radiation and it was a downward spiral for all over 2021 until this time last year when she was basically a vegetable. She lasted a few more months on literally a few sips of water and diet cok

        • I'm sorry for your loss. But diet coke brings up the need for a public service announcement:

          Your body needs calories to survive. I don't understand how so many people can overlook that when hit by serious illness. Just staying alive consumes something like 1000 calories per day, and if you're not eating them, your body WILL start eating itself to survive.

          If you or a loved one mostly stops eating, for any reason, whatever is eaten should be as sugar- and starch-rich as possible (starch = complex, slow-dig

    • Saying that it can give patients years of extra life is something of an exaggeration.

      It literally cannot be.

      A tiny number of patients lived years longer than expected.

      You literally just proved your first assertion false.

      The average was just two or three extra months.

      Averages are a terrible way to try to evaluate what happens, here.
      It says nothing of the rate of effectiveness, vs. how effective if it when it works.

      this might not even do anything at all except in rare fluke cases.

      Bingo.
      This is acknowledged.

      The important breakdown:

      Overall 13% of people who received it lived for at least five years after diagnosis, while just 5.7% of those in the control group did so

      It about doubles your chances of surviving the disease past the rate that we keep statistics for. Ignore the average quote- it's a useless number without more context.

    • Cancer? Aggressive fasting for 5 days or more prior to treatment is highly recommended, just water and electrolytes. There is little research on this. Also some diabetes drug reduce chemo damage - but a study on this got no funding, because these drugs are off patent.
    • You misunderstand statistics. If one person lives to 1 and another to 100 then the mean life expectancy is 50 years old. With aggressive Glioblastoma death often comes well before 13 months which skews the statistics downwards and the vaccine is not likely to be very effective for this group. In those people lucky enough to survive longer then the vaccine could give the extra years of life the heading claims.

  • "The vaccine works by stimulating the patient's own immune system to fight against the patient's tumor. It provides a personalized solution, working with a patient's immune system, which is the most intelligent system known to man,"

    If I understand the way that the immune system functions, I would liken it more to an in-built organic AI than anything I would call intelligent.

    It reacts to stimuli and produces varying responses, most of which do the right thing. Over time it builds up a "library" of known pathogens which it has dealt with previously and can modify its behavior accordingly.

    Unfortunately, sometimes it gets things wrong and decides that molecules normally found within the typical human body don't belong there and attacks th

    • >It reacts to stimuli and produces varying responses, most of which do the wrong thing.

      Fixed that for you. The immune system is not particularly intelligent, its "intelligence" comes from trying lots and lots of stupid things very quickly, and then focusing on the things that actually work. It only does the right thing early on when fighting something it's already familiar with.

      I suppose by numbers it mostly does the right thing, simply because most of the things it tries don't work, and thus never get

  • It gives brain cancer, Monsanto's getting sued hard. this thing might lower the penalty, in rich countries.
  • The time between my dad's diagnosis with GBM and his death were absolutely the worst for him and our family. They were not good months where he got to live well.
  • But, what QUALITY of life? If you can't be active, what good is it?

  • https://jamanetwork.com/journa... [jamanetwork.com]

    A useful therapy, but likely disappointing to the developers for not being a complete cure.

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