UAMS to begin testing breast cancer vaccine
BY CAROLYNE PARK
Posted on Sunday, January 4, 2009
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/248462/
UAMS scientists expect to start clinical trials as early as this spring on a new vaccine they hope will help prevent the recurrence of breast cancer.
The immunotherapy is designed to trick the body into doing something it wouldn't naturally do - produce antibodies that fight breast cancer cells.
The vaccine was developed through a decade of studying how the immune system responds to disease, said Thomas Kieber-Emmons, director of basic breast cancer research at the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.
The key to developing a therapy to fight breast cancer is understanding the interplay of different molecules in combating disease, he said.
"I look at it structurally," said Kieber-Emmons, professor of pathology, microbiology
and immunology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. "How two molecules interact is everything."
Breast cancer cells are covered with carbohydrate antigens. An antigen is a molecule capable of triggering the production of antibodies that fight disease. But the carbohydrate antigens on cancer cells don't stimulate a strong immune system response.
So Kieber-Emmons and his team found an alternative approach.
With a six-year $2.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense Breast Cancer
Research Program, they used computer generation to help them develop peptide antigens that mimic the carbohydrates. A peptide is a compound consisting of two or
more amino acids.
The peptide-based vaccine is designed to make the body think it's dealing with a
carbohydrate.
The immune system then responds by producing antibodies that target both the
peptides in the vaccine and the carbohydrates they resemble on the breast cancer cells.
After skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women,
according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
It is the leading cause of cancer death in Hispanic women and the second mostcommon
cause of cancer death in white, black, Asian and American Indian women.
A total of 186,772 women were diagnosed with breast cancer and 40,954 women died of
it in 2004, according to the CDC's latest data.
That same year, 1,815 men were diagnosed with breast cancer and 362 men died of the
disease.
The National Cancer Institute estimates one in eight women will be diagnosed with
breast cancer.
Dr. Laura Hutchins, a UAMS professor of internal medicine and director of the division of hematology and oncology, is principal investigator for the clinical trial. She's in charge of interacting with patients.
Women participating in the study will receive five doses of the vaccine at the cancer
institute's medical oncology clinic. They will be immunized once a week for the first
three weeks and again during the seventh and 19th weeks.
The first phase of the clinical trial will last four to six months. It will involve women with metastatic cancer, or cancer that is actively spreading, and women who have relapsed after going into remission.
UAMS scientists will use the first phase to monitor any side effects of the vaccine,
Hutchins said.
The scientists hope to begin the second phase of the clinical trial about four months
later. It will last about a year and include women who have had breast cancer but are
in remission and considered at high risk of having it again.
The women will have to have been off chemotherapy for at least six months.
The number of patients participating in the study hasn't been determined.
The first two phases will involve Arkansas patients, but future clinical trials may
expand to include patients from other cancer centers around the country, Hutchins
said.
The vaccine won't replace traditional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and
radiation, but depending on how the clinical trials go it may become an additional
treatment option for patients, Hutchins said.
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