The newly fashioned medicine works by supplying the immune system with a way to 'recognize' the tumor and an 'instruction manual' for its entire transcriptome. This reveals whereEquipped with such vital information, the immune system can reprogram the cancer's defenses and launch a more successful attack.
"In less than 48 hours, we could see these tumors shifting from what we refer to as 'cold' – immune cold, very few immune cells, very silenced immune response – to 'hot,' very active immune response,""That was very surprising given how quick this happened, and what that told us is we were able to activate the early part of the immune system very rapidly against these cancers, and that's critical to unlock the later effects of the immune response.
A third patient lived for a further nine months with recurrent glioblastoma. Precise survival information has not yet been reported for the fourth patient, who is the first participant in an expanded phase 1 clinical trial. Usually, the median survivorship for recurrent glioblastoma is between five and eight months.
The new vaccine works by reprogramming the TME using a sample of the tumor itself. By taking the messenger RNA of the tumor and packaging it into a deliverable vaccine, researchers can 'teach' a patient's killer immune cells how to get around the TME.