More Good News Regarding Immunotherapy

I’ve posted a few times regarding immunotherapy (both its historical context as well as newer attempts using microneedles). I just came across another article that shows promise in treating melanoma with targeted and personalized melanoma cancer vaccines, using the patients’ own immune system to help combat the disease.

In the article, two melanoma patients whose cancer had metastasized to the liver were treated using surgery and treatment with vaccines that were made with the patient’s individual cells to promote the use of the immune system in fighting the melanoma. You may or may not know, but once melanoma spreads to the liver, there’s not a very good prognosis. According to the MD Anderson Cancer Center, patients who present with metastatic disease (stage IV; about 4% of cases) have a 5-year relative survival rate of only about 16%. That’s a pretty grim statistic there.

But with the addition of a vaccine known as eltrapuldencel-T, these two patients achieved some pretty remarkable results. One of the patients was able to survive for at least 8.5 years (4.5 of which did not show any progression of the disease) while the other is still surviving and showing no signs of the disease after 12 years! Twelve years is another lifetime to someone with metastasized melanoma in the liver; let alone having 12 years that are disease-free. It is, without hyperbole, a new lifetime that was granted to this patient.

I am going to assume that the treatment was conducted in the United States as the article cites Robert O. Dillman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, NeoStem Oncology (Irvine, CA) and Executive Medical and Scientific Director, Hoag Cancer Institute (Newport Beach, CA) as the doctor reporting the results to another publication, Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals. 

I am excited to see progress in this area. It does make me wonder about chemotherapy, which completely disables most people’s immune systems. Maybe in the future, we will hear about specific dietary “prescriptions”, vitamins or supplements, and meditation or massage combined with excisions/surgeries and individualized immunotherapy touted as ways for melanoma patients to halt the progression of their diseases and give people a chance at a new lease on life.