Immunotherapy to Fight Mesothelioma?

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A vaccine that uses a patient's own cells may be able to fight a rare cancer and increase length of survival.

Mesothelioma is a type of cancer associated with asbestos exposure. Asbestos has been banned in the U.S. for decades, but diagnosis of the cancer can take place up to 50 years after exposure. Researchers fear cases of the cancer will continue to increase until the year 2020.

Experts estimate the average length of survival once diagnosed with mesothelioma is 12 months, and chemotherapy treatment has been shown to improve the survival rate by only about three months.

Now, researchers have developed a new vaccine to use in the fight against mesothelioma. The treatment involves exposing a patient's dendritic cells (DC) to antigens from their tumors. In studies, the DC vaccine induced a promising T-cell response against the mesothelioma tumor.

"This is the first human study on DC-based immunotherapy in patients with mesothelioma," Joachim D. Aerts, M.D, Ph.D., a pulmonary physician at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, wrote.

"We hope that by further development of our method it will be possible to increase survival in patients with mesothelioma and eventually vaccinate persons who have been in contact with asbestos to prevent them from getting asbestos related diseases." Dr. Aerts was quoted as saying.

SOURCE: American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, March 2010

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