Personalized melanoma vaccines marshal powerful immune response
Personalized melanoma vaccines can be used to marshal a powerful immune response against unique mutations in patients’ tumors, according to early data in a first-in-people clinical trial at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The tailor-made vaccines, given to three patients with advanced melanoma, appeared to increase the number and diversity of cancer-fighting T cells responding to the tumors. The finding is a boost to cancer immunotherapy, a treatment strategy that unleashes the immune system to seek out and destroy cancer. The research is reported April 2 in Science Express, in a special issue devoted to cancer immunology and immunotherapy.