Richard Scolyer, first patient for a Glioblastoma vaccine, is 10 months in and counting. (I'm not sure if it's mRNA based.) The treatment was vaccine, followed by surgery to remove the tumour, followed by more vaccine to prevent recurrence. The vaccine course is up to 8 out of 10 planned doses. So far it hasn't come back.<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ProfRScolyer" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/ProfRScolyer</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Scolyer#Cancer_diagnosis_and_treatment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Scolyer#Cancer_diagnos...</a>
MRNA and personalized cancer vaccines are showing tremendous potential in a lot of cancers: <a href="https://jakeseliger.com/2024/04/12/moderna-mrna-4157-v90-news-for-head-and-neck-cancer-patients-like-me/" rel="nofollow">https://jakeseliger.com/2024/04/12/moderna-mrna-4157-v90-new...</a>. GBM is particularly gnarly; one of the few other treatments in trials I'm aware of is DCVax: <a href="https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/fda-approval-brain-cancer-alzheimers" rel="nofollow">https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/fda-approval-brain-c...</a>.<p>One big problem is the FDA's slowness regarding treatments for otherwise fatal diseases like GBM.
Sounds effective, I've always had a hunch the real path to controlling cancer is not a singular approach. Cancer mutates too much.<p>>> “Instead of us injecting single particles, we’re injecting clusters of particles that are wrapping around each other like onions, like a bag full of onions,” said Elias Sayour, MD, PhD, a UF Health pediatric oncologist who pioneered the new vaccine. “And the reason we’ve done that in the context of cancer is these clusters alert the immune system in a much more profound way than single particles would.” Results from the canine trial showed how the vaccine reprogrammed the tumor microenvironment (TME) within days, allowing the activated immune system cells to fight the tumor.<p><a href="https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)00398-2" rel="nofollow">https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)00398-2</a>
When COVID hit one of the few positives was that a lot of people joined in cross-discipline research to address it. This type of treatment sounds amazing, and I know mRNA vaccines were in development for a long time before COVID, but I have to wonder if this research would have taken a lot longer to happen had COVID not happened. What other secondary impacts has the research into COVID had?
My SO's PI died of Glioblastoma a few years ago, completely derailing their career path, halting all research, and leaving behind a grieving and struggling family. It's difficult to picture how my life would be different had this treatment been available.
As we see more and more promising therapies like this, that are essentially custom fit to the patient, it makes me all the more worried about the US health care systems. A treatment like this will be expensive, which in the long run means that we'll have a society where people with money won't have cancer (or at least will have a less deadly version), while the people without money will not. We'll be converting cancer to a problem of poverty. None of this is to say that we shouldn't pursue these advancements, but rather we should start thinking about how we can change our system to ensure that every member of our society has equal access to medicine.
GBM is horrible.<p>At my first company, our VP of Sales, Luke Little, was one of my favorite people to hang with; I was still barely 20 and he was in his 40's but he had quite the mischievous twinkle in his eye and was willing to join us kids in tomfoolery and tell us about the world. We were acquired and got a great exit in July; he had a seizure driving the Cobra he bought to celebrate a few months later; he went downhill quickly and died within a couple of years. He had a young son, too.
> but the canine patients lived a median of 139 days, compared with a median survival of 30–60 days typical for dogs with the condition<p>so you might get an improvement in overall survival but not a cure for GBM
Is there a good book about cancer for a layman? That can help them understand what exactly the disease is, it's variants and a list of potential strategies to beat the disease.
This seems to be a much better application of a gene therapy shot of this kind that has such a small targeted scope. A virus that mutates would clearly be an exercise in playing constant catch-up, but this seems a lot more realistic.<p>Is there anything that works to replace the delivery system that's more reliable/predictable than the lipid-based carriers?
I'm glad they're testing this. A vaccine approach always has the risk of hitting healthy tissue as well with the immune response. And when that tissue is brain tissue...<p>Testing is necessary anyway to get insurance companies to pay for something. They like to deny coverage, and if the treatment is not proved to work that's an easy excuse.
This is an area where mRNA immunization can be very effective. I hope that this can be widely deployed in the next years, it can make a real difference. Something that also has great potential is the use of phages, that should definitely receive at least equal parallel research attention.
“To generate each vaccine RNA was first extracted from each patient’s own surgically removed tumor…”<p>Wait!? It can be any tumor right or do they have to open my skull and take a sample of the actual tumor they want to get rid of.
I'm confused and the term vaccine. My understanding was that a vaccine contains a deactivated virus. Is mRNA not a form of gene therapy? I understand not wanting to spook people away getting the shot during an actual pandemic and altering terminology, but isn't this something other than a "vaccine"?
Cancer tends to have an interesting relationship with cellular protein transport. And as a consequence has problems dealing with heat. The protein transport mechanism by which immune surveillance is conducted is shared with cells surviving heat increases via ejection of heat shock proteins.<p>I once tried to find if there were any studies about incidence of cancer plotted against incidence of high fever in the same individuals but wasn't able to find anything. It may also point to the incidence of cancer actually rising due to suppression of other diseases.<p>This is plausible due the fact that diseases are a constant in nature and therefore evolution would take their presence as a given as much as the seasons or the sun. It would be very unfortunate if numerous anti-cancer adaptions simply haven't evolved because regular fevers took care of those cancer precursors.
After my COVID shot, I got 2 or 3 days of Transient Global Amnesia. It has scarred my son, who worries about amnesia every single time he's a little delirious from an illness or some such.<p>By my estimation, the people who threatened and socially pressured others to get an unfinished, experimental gene therapy injection that was always socially enforced to be referred to in polite company as a "vaccine" are the ones liable for any damages that might occur. My son may be scared of random amnesia for the rest of his life. What does he get? What do I get?<p>What do the people get who believed themselves to be above moral reproach specifically because they were afraid? How do we make sure such people never get to make a decision on my or my sons' behalf ever again?<p>To say nothing of my cousin, a death of despair due to overblown lockdowns that did more damage than COVID.<p>What do we do to make sure this doesn't happen again? The answer <i>cannot</i> be "nothing."