Cancer Updates Dec Issue Final-16006_Cancer_Updates_Dec_Issue_F4_spreads | Page 14

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Step-by-Step Study Enrolling Pancreatic Cancer Patients
The PancVax study has taken years of planning
and regulatory approvals. The first patient in
the study was enrolled in late 2015. Although
the study is planned to accrue as many as 20
patients, the US Food and Drug Administration
has required treating the first three patients one
at a time, sequentially, with each completing the
vaccination treatment (a series of six injections),
which will provide both an added margin
of safety and a slower start to the trial. Two
patients have completed six vaccines and one
is currently under treatment.
The blood cells needed to make the dendritic
cells are collected by apheresis. A minimum
of 10,000 dendritic cells are needed from
each patient to produce a sufficient vaccine.
The dendritic cells are transfected with two
antigens: mesothelin, a protein found on normal
mesothelial cells lining the pleura, pericardium,
and peritoneum and overexpressed in a number
of tumors including pancreatic adenocarcinoma;
and Wilms’ tumor protein, found in Wilms’
tumors of the kidney and many other cancers,
including pancreatic adenocarcinoma.
“Those dendritic cells will then educate
the T-cells to go and attack the cancer,”
Dr. Becerra said.
The vaccine is specific to each patient by
using their own cells to make the vaccine, thus
minimizing the risk of rejection or other
potential complications. So far, there have been
no significant side effects, he said. “Our hope
is that the immune system will take over and
control the cancer, and the patients can live
longer,” Dr. Becerra said.
Researchers are now in the process of analyzing
test samples from the initial patients in the trial,
and plans are for more patients to accrue in
the coming year. The study is funded through
the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute
of Texas, which the voters of Texas approved in
2007, authorizing the state to issue $3 billion in
bonds to fund groundbreaking cancer research
and prevention programs and services for
cancer patients.
For information about enrolling in PancVax or other
cancer clinical trials at Baylor University Medical
Center at Dallas, please contact the office of Clinical
Oncology Research Coordination at 214.818.8472.
VACCINE-BASED CLINICAL TRIALS AIM TO
ATTACK DIFFICULT-TO-TREAT
GLIOBLASTOMA BRAIN TUMORS
AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER AT DALLAS
Brain tumors are unlike any other cancer.
They strike at the organ that allows us to
think and control our bodies in a way that
other cancers do not. They are also highly
resistant to standard treatments. a handful of drugs have been approved for
use against glioblastoma multiforme (GBM),
an extremely aggressive and deadly type
of cancer that makes up the majority of
primary brain tumors.
Only a limited number of anticancer drugs
can get into the brain. To get to the tumor
cells, you must use drugs that can penetrate
the protective blood vessels that make up
the blood-brain barrier. Current standard-of-care treatment for
GBM includes the surgical removal of as
much of the tumor as possible without
removing too much vital brain tissue,
followed by radiation and chemotherapy
using temozolomide. This treatment regimen
typically achieves a median survival of 14.6
months. Unfortunately, recurrence of GBM
is virtually assured, because surgery cannot
remove all of the cancer cells since they are
highly invasive and aggressively disperse
into surrounding brain tissue. Recurring
GBM tumors usually appear within a few
centimeters of the resected tumor.
“Our brain was designed, evolutionarily, to
keep poisons out, and so only the drugs
that are small molecularly, or fat soluble,
get into the brain,” said Karen Fink, MD,
PhD, medical director of neuro-oncology at
Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas,
and principal investigator at Baylor Scott &
White Research Institute. As a result, only