Nanoparticles and RNA Used to Engineer an Immune Response to Cancer

An approach using nanoparticles to deliver RNA to immune cells, so as to kick off an immune response targeted to a specific cancer, has been in the news of late. Immunotherapies of a wide variety of types will form the basis for the coming generation of cancer therapies, the replacements for the present staples of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but there is far too much work taking place to comment on every single project. It is a matter of accident rather than merit as to which research results receive greater or lesser attention from the public and the media. With the immune system being as complicated as it is, there are a lot of different ways in which to manipulate its activities, and most are in principle capable of producing viable therapies. Competition in this marketplace is as much to find a reliably, cost-effective way to address many cancers with the same technology platform as it is to find treatments that work.

Researchers have published a description of the first example worldwide of a clinically relevant and systemic mRNA cancer immunotherapy. They outline a novel approach to target a nanoparticle mRNA vaccine (RNA-LPX) body-wide to dendritic cells in the spleen, lymph nodes and bone marrow, where a highly potent, dual-mechanism immune response mimicking a natural antiviral immune response is rapidly elicited. The dual mechanism involves both adaptive (T-cell-mediated) and innate (type-I interferon (IFN)-mediated) immune responses, with the IFN response being essential for full anti-tumor effects of the vaccines. "Our study introduces a novel class of extraordinarily potent cancer vaccines that enables efficient redirection of the immune system against a wide range of tumor antigens. This is a major step towards our aim to make truly personalized cancer immunotherapies available and applicable to all cancer types."

The researchers further provide mode of action and efficacy data for this novel vaccine class in several preclinical tumor models and reports early data from a phase I dose-escalation, safety and tolerability trial (NCT02410733) of an intravenous RNA-LPX vaccine in melanoma patients. Crucially, in these patients, very low initial doses, lower than those used in preclinical studies, very rapidly elicited such a strong CD4+ and CD8+ T cell response that ex vivo culture was not required for detection. To date this vaccine has been very well tolerated and no severe toxicities have been observed. The phase I melanoma study continues to recruit patients and researchers plan to execute additional RNA-LPX vaccine studies for different cancer types.

Link: http://biontech.de/2016/06/01/nature-publication-describes-first-example-of-a-clinically-applicable-and-systemic-mrna-cancer-immunotherapy-vaccine/

Comments

I think the only thing that can potentially stop life extension are not science.
they are religion and politic. more discussions on reform in religion and politic are needed.
find a solution for the religious and political leaders, then we can get what we want a lot sooner.

Posted by: believer at June 2nd, 2016 9:42 AM

btw, why do you think I can trust lifespan.io ? it is very new.

Posted by: believer at June 2nd, 2016 10:07 AM

convince me. I promise I can help a lot. I am not an average Joe.

Posted by: believer at June 2nd, 2016 10:08 AM

None of the three human patients in the stage one trial achieved complete remission. But it would be interesting to combine a range of these vaccines with checkpoint inhibitor antibodies.

Posted by: jim at June 2nd, 2016 10:18 AM

@believer: Everyone was new at some point. Lifespan.io is run by people who are a part of this community, and they've shown themselves willing over the past 18 months to put in considerable volunteer time to help make fundraisers succeed, to run outreach to audiences that had yet to hear about SENS approaches for the treatment of aging, and generally do their part to make a difference. They ran a successful fundraiser last year for SENS. I'm willing to donate to projects via their operation.

Posted by: Reason at June 2nd, 2016 1:05 PM

My suggestion for lifespan was they go from a site that just accepts donations to one that provides personal fundraiser pages for each person for it's causes.

There are sites out there like Go Fund Me which help people to raise money from their friends and family, but they almost always charge fairly hefty fees. Plus they offer no branding, media, or outreach materials about the cause money is being raised for.

The senolytics fundraiser has 264 donors so far. The median donation is probably in the 50 to hundred dollar range. If you could get 60 of those backers to raise money by doing a charity walk or shaving a beard, and the median amount raised was 1,000 dollars, you'd go from raising 60k to 600k.

That might take a research group from just slightly accelerating a study to really attacking a relevant field of research each year.

Posted by: Jim at June 3rd, 2016 7:14 AM
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