Tumor-Killing 101: Vaccine Trains Immune Cells to Keep Skin Cancer at Bay
Cancer researchers have developed a therapeutic vaccine for melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer. Instead of protecting against an infectious agent, such as with the flu vaccine, this cancer vaccine uses the patient’s own cancer cells to train the immune system to attack and destroy cancer.
“This is a new strategy for immunotherapy,” said University of Chicago professor and study lead Melody Swartz. “It has the potential to be more efficacious, less expensive, and much safer than many other immunotherapies. It is truly personalized medicine that has the potential to overcome many issues that arise with other treatments.” The research was published in Science Advances.
Skin cancer is the most common of all cancers, and melanomas make up just 1 percent of these. Melanomas affect melanocytes-pigment-producing cells in the upper layers of skin.
During melanoma development, tumors can start to fuse with lymphatic vessels during metastasis, allowing them to spread deeper into the skin and other parts of the body. However, Swartz and colleagues identified that tumors associated with lymphatic vessels become sensitized to immune attack, either by resident T cells or by immunotherapies. A molecule called vascular endothelial growth factor C, or VEGF-C, facilitates this…
