PATIENTS at two North-East hospitals will trial a revolutionary new vaccine which has the potential to become a universal treatment for all cancers.
The trial is testing the effectiveness of the TeloVac jab for advanced pancreatic cancer.
The South Korean company which has developed the vaccine said it has the potential to be a universal treatment for cancer within a few years.
The James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, and The Freeman Hospital, in Newcastle, are among 53 UK centres trialling the vaccine, which primes the body’s immune system to recognise and kill cancer cells.
About 7,600 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in Britain each year. It is particularly difficult to treat, and only three per cent of those diagnosed, live for more than five years.
Smaller studies have found that people given the vaccine, called GV1001, as well as chemotherapy, live three months longer than those given only chemotherapy.
John Neoptolemos, director of the Liverpool Cancer Research UK Centre, said: “If it is successful, it would make a real difference.”
GV1001 contains a fragment of an enzyme called telomerase, which is usually found in human embryos and which cancer cells use to divide unchecked.
The vaccine teaches T-cells, a part of the immune system, to recognise cells that produce telomerase – which in adults are all cancer cells – and attack them. The results of the trial will be announced next autumn, and, if successful, a vaccine could be approved in late 2013 or 2014.
Scientists hope the method could work on other types of tumour and a trial for lung cancer is planned.
Cancer Research UK, which funded the research, stressed the vaccine was not a cure for cancer, but could prolong the lives of sufferers.
source: thenorthernecho.co.uk
www.cancerclaims.co.uk
