Having therapeutic cancer vaccines available is “a dream that has been pursued for a long time.” The immunologist Alberto Mantovani, professor emeritus of General Pathology and vice rector for research at Humanitas University, told Sky TG24, speaking on the Health broadcast of the work of professor Maria Rescigno and her team on vaccines against melanoma and sarcoma, whose testing of the first vaccine could start as early as the end of 2023.
The vaccine
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The Sky TG24 cameras went to the laboratories of Professor Rescigno, full professor of General Pathology and Deputy Rector with responsibility for research at Humanitas University, where surgical samples from patients operated on for melanoma and sarcoma arrive from the operating theaters of the cancer center. The researchers culture the cancer cells and identify the “flags,” the stressed antigens that are the ones to target. Once they have a name they are tested and those common to most are selected. From here begins the creation of vaccines, which will be two and will be therapeutic. They will be administered when there is a diagnosis of advanced melanoma or sarcoma or ostiosarcoma, tumors which due to metastases and aggressiveness leave no hope of cure and therefore of survival. There are already preventive vaccines against viruses associated with tumors, but the big news is that in this case we are talking about a therapeutic vaccine.
Rescigno: “The aim is to generate vaccines against melanoma and sarcoma”
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Rescigno explained that she started, together with her team, from the “study of melanoma because 40% of patients who receive immunotherapy respond very well, but there is still 40-60% of the population who do not respond either immediately or at the beginning therapy”. What was then noted is that “the immune response that is reactivated by immunotherapy is sometimes not there and therefore we simply have to turn on the immune system to recognize tumors”. Studies have shown that “melanoma and sarcoma are tumors characterized by stress. The cell is so stressed by the fact that it has mutations, with which it has to live, that it has flags on its surface that indicate the state of stress “. The challenge is therefore to try “to identify these flags by hyperstressing the cell even more with bacteria, so that it is easier to identify the flags, i.e. the antigenic stress peptides. In this way we identify flags common to several patients in so as to generate a vaccine that can be used in one case in melanoma and in the other case in sarcoma”.
“Experimentation? We hope already at the end of 2023”
But where are the vaccines? “The real project started in 2019, which is financed by Airc and which includes many operating units – explained Rescigno -. We have already identified the flags in melanoma and instead we have to start with the production that will be done by specialized companies, which follow all the characteristics required by the regulatory bodies, and which will end, we hope, by the end of 2023”. Once the vaccine is produced, it will be tested on patients. “The clinical trial will be in three phases. In the first we will evaluate safety and the beginning of effectiveness and then instead in the second and third phases the number of patients will increase to demonstrate efficacy – added the professor -. Of these two phases the pharmaceutical companies will take care of it, while we will take care of the sarcoma and we will continue our studies for the identification of the vaccine to be used in the sarcoma. We are very confident and we hope that the preclinical studies we have carried out will prove themselves in the patient. With this we will have also made our contribution to science and to improving the lives of patients”.
Mantovani: “We are optimistic and we are pursuing the dream of therapeutic vaccines”
Commenting on research into therapeutic vaccines, Mantovani said it is “a dream that has been pursued for a long time. Over nine years in this case, but there are previous experiences of many people around the world who have pursued the dream of having vaccines.” therapeutics for cancer”. For the immunologist “the extraordinary thing about Professor Rescigno’s idea is that it is an original path, it is not following paths already followed by others. We are optimistic and we are pursuing the dream of therapeutic vaccines“.