Personalized ovarian cancer vaccine shows promise in pilot trial

By J.L. Tanyi et al. | April 11, 2018
Science Translational Medicine
(complete article here)

A new type of cancer vaccine has yielded promising results in an initial clinical trial conducted at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The personalized vaccine is made from patients’ own immune cells, which are exposed in the laboratory to the contents of the patients’ tumor cells, and then injected into the patients to initiate a wider immune response. The trial, conducted in advanced ovarian cancer patients, was a pilot trial aimed primarily at determining safety and feasibility, but there were clear signs that it could be effective…..(read more)

The personalized vaccine is composed of the patient’s dendritic cells, which were harvested from serum samples (steps 4-6). The cells were then exposed to a solution of material previously gathered from the tumor (steps 1-3) before being injected back into the patient in vaccine form (steps 7-8).