First Breakthrough Trial Of 'Universal Cancer Vaccine' Performed By Researchers

First trial of "Universal Cancer Vaccine" was conducted by researchers, where the vaccine was designed to trigger human immune system to fight against tumor. Unlike the usual vaccination procedure, the vaccine is given to patients with cancer and not to those at risk of developing the disease.

On injection into human body, the vaccine reaches the immune system and makes them recognize the cancer cells. In order for immune system to recognize specific tumor cells, the vaccine is made of bits of genetic RNA code from cancer cells attached to nanoparticles of fat, according to The Week.

For the trial, the researchers injected the vaccine into three patients that are suffering from advanced stages of cancer. The immune system that encountered the RNA in the vaccine recognized the tumors cells and produced immune cells to attack the tumor specifically.

Professor Ugur Sahin from Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany noted that the vaccine was effective against "aggressively growing" tumors in mice. He also noted that the vaccines are cost-effective and can also be made specifically for each tumor.

"The vaccines are fast and inexpensive to produce and virtually any tumour antigen can be encoded by RNA," said Sahin, noted The Telegraph. "The approach introduced here may be regarded as a universally applicable novel vaccine class for cancer immunotherapy," he added.

Professor Alan Melcher, of the Institute of Cancer Research noted that results of immunotherapy for treatment of cancer are encouraging. The research carried out in small population has shown that vaccine can trigger immune response towards cancer cells. However, as far as mice experiments are concerned, it is not certain if the immune response witnessed will translate to humans.

"We know the immune system has great potential to be manipulated and reactivated to fight cancer cells, that's why we've been funding research into this for 15 years," Dr Helen Rippon, chief executive of Worldwide Cancer Research, reported Byron Shire News.

"However, more research is needed in a larger number of people with different cancer types and over longer periods of time before we could say we have discovered a 'universal cancer vaccine'. But this research is a very positive step forwards towards this global goal," Rippon said.