LUNG CANCER VACCINE
Lung cancer strikes more than 170,000 people each year. Only 15 percent of them will be cured. The rest will be given just months to live. About a new vaccine that gives patients hope.
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Marilyn Cohn knows how to deal with a bad hand.
Her doctor dealt her one she thought she wouldn't be able to beat.
Marilyn Cohn
Lung cancer survivor
"He said, I had lung cancer, and right to my face, he said, 'You have one year to live.'"
Doctor Luis Raez gave her a second chance.
Luis E. Raez, MD, FACP
Oncologist
Sylvester Cancer Center
University of Miami
Miami, FL
"When she came to us, the tumor had already spread."
Her only hope -- a vaccine -- never before tested in humans.
Marilyn Cohn
"When you're told you have a year to live...you'll do anything!"
Luis, E. Raez, MD, FACP
"We're trying to make your immune system aware that you have a lung cancer tumor inside, and we need to kill it, and you need to defend yourself."
To do that, doctors inject patients with a vaccine filled with lung cancer cells. It's the same theory used to fight the flu. The immune system is alerted of the foreign cells and kills them.
Luis E. Raez, MD, FACP
"Your immune system builds up an army of cells. It goes and fights the lung cancer tumor."
That army then seeks out lung cancer cells throughout the body and destroys them.
19 patients got the vaccine. One tumor shrunk and five others stopped growing, including Marilyn's.
Luis E. Raez, MD, FACP
"We stopped the tumor growing, but also, she has not progressed in that time."
After surviving eight years, she knows luck is on her side!
As for side effects, the only thing patients complained about was a slight rash. The vaccine will now move on to another trial involving 70 patients. They will be given one injection a week for nine weeks.
LUNG CANCER: About 170,000 people will be diagnosed with lung cancer this year. Between 70 percent and 80 percent of those people smoke. Only percent will be cured. The rest will be given less than a year to live.
SYMPTOMS OF LUNG CANCER INCLUDE:
A cough that doesn't go away and gets worst over time
Constant chest pain
Coughing up blood
Shortness of breath, wheezing or hoarseness
Repeated problems with pneumonia or bronchitis
Loss of appetite or weight loss
Fatigue
CURRENT TREATMENTS: Treatment depends on a number of factors, including the type of lung cancer (non-small or small cell lung cancer), the size, location, and extent of the tumor, and the general health of the patient. Many different treatments and combinations of treatments may be used to control lung cancer, and/or to improve quality of life by reducing symptoms. Treatments include surgery to remove the cancer, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and photodynamic therapy.
A NEW VACCINE: Beginning in 1999, an experimental vaccine for lung cancer was tested at the University of Miami in 19 patients, all of whom were out of options. Six responded and survived for several years. Four are still alive, having had no other treatment for this deadly disease. Now, 70 new patients will get a chance to try the vaccine. Luis E. Raez, M.D, co-chair of the Thoracic Oncology Group at the University of Miami, has been awarded a three-year, $300,000 Clinical Innovator Award from the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute -- funding which makes two new phase II clinical trials possible.
In one, patients who are not eligible for surgery but who respond well to chemotherapy will be treated with the vaccine. "Within four months," explains Raez, "Fifty percent of those patients with good outcomes from the chemo would relapse." The hope is the vaccine will delay or prevent that relapse. The second group will be made up of patients who have had their tumors surgically removed. "Naturally, that's a better setting for a vaccination," says Eckhard R. Podack, M.D., Ph.D., chairman of Microbiology and Immunology. He devised the vaccine. "When there is minimal disease or no detectable disease, the immune system will respond much better." Making enough of the vaccine, greatly taxes the resources of Dr. Podack's lab. It's a job that would be eased by an automated culture system, something the lab can't afford. But the work goes on. Dr's Podack and Raez are also about to begin a phase I trial on a different lung cancer vaccine called gp96.
Kelly Kaufhold
University of Miami/Miller School of Medicine
Office of Communication
1475 NW 12th Avenue
Miami, Florida 33136
(305) 243-5184
kkaufhold@med.Miami.edu
Copyright © 2006 Ivanhoe Broadcast News, Inc.
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