An experimental vaccines implant to
treat skin cancer has begun early trials in human,as part of a
growing effort to train the immune system to fight tumors,researchers
said Friday
This approach,which was shown to work
in lab mice in 2009,involves placing a fingernail-sized sponge under
the skin where it programs a patients immune cells to find cancerous
melanoma cells and kill them.
The phase I trail aims to test the
safety of the implant in a small number of human patients. After
that,the device may move to phase II trials on effectiveness and
larger phase III trials before reaching th e the market.
The implants are made of biodegradable
polymer material that are highly permeable and contain antigens that
specific to the kind of tumor being targeted.
The device releases a protein that
attract immune cells and send them out armed to hunt down and kill
tumor cells.
Researchers say it works differently
than conventional cancer vaccines—which involve removing immune
cells from the patients,reprogramming them to attack malignancies and
re-injecting them—because it work from inside the body
Pharmaceutical giants Merck and Roche
also have drugs that use the immune system to fight cancer in
clinical trials
0 comments:
Post a Comment