A new vaccine with the potential to treat mesothelioma has been proven safe to use on patients of the asbestos related cancer. According to ScienceDaily, the vaccine works by infusing “a patient’s own dendritic cells (DC) with antigen from the patient’s tumor” leading to a response in the patient’s T-cells.
Joachim G Aerts M.D., Ph.D., a pulmonary doctor at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, explains that the vaccine research is the "first human study on DC-based immunotherapy in patients with mesothelioma."
Mesothelioma is one of the most difficult cancers to treat because it can take up to 50 years for symptoms to manifest. Once it develops, the individual only has about a one-year period to be successfully treated for the cancer. While current treatments include surgery and radiation therapy, success rates are not as high as doctors would like.
The vaccine has been tested in a group of 10 mesothelioma patients. After two weeks, all the patients showed an improvement in antibodies and three of the patients also appeared to experience tumor regression. However, the findings have yet to attribute the reduction in tumor size solely to the vaccine and further research is in progress.
"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," says Aerts.
Although it will still be a while before the vaccine is introduced to the general public, Aerts, as well as his colleagues, remain hopeful that there will soon be a solution for mesothelioma patients.
Individuals stricken with mesothelioma are urged to seek help from a mesothelioma attorney as soon as possible to increase survival rate for the cancer. A mesothelioma attorney will work to get a patient the medical assistance they require for the disease.
