MUSC professor working to create vaccine to fight breast cancer
One in eight women will develop an invasive form of breast cancer in her lifetime, according to Breastcancer.org. It is estimated that in 2016 alone, there will be 246,660 new cases of invasive breast cancer.
A professor at the Medical University of South Carolina has developed something that can possibly help these women beat this disease.
Dr. Adam Soloff, MUSC assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, has been researching and creating a vaccination that trains the body to fight off breast cancer.
With a $450,000 Komen National Research grant from the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Soloff has been working to create a vaccination that targets tumors expressing the MUC1 glycoprotein, which is a protein found in 80 percent of solid tumors and 90 percent of breast cancer cells, Soloff said.
The vaccination helps the immune system create “killer T-cells,” a type of white blood cell that will multiply and destroy the tumor. Normally, T-cells will not recognize and attack a tumor efficiently since the tumor arises from a person’s own body, and the body is designed not to attack itself. The vaccine trains the body’s T-cells to overcome this tolerance while attacking only the cancer cells and not the healthy cells.
Several years ago, it was discovered that when a tumor grows, it develops defenses that signal the body to leave it alone. The tumor, growing in an inflammatory environment, attracts white blood cells, but when the cells visit the site, the cancer says “all is well” and tricks the body into thinking it is harmless.
Newly developed drugs called “T-cell checkpoint inhibitors” were created to block the false “ok” sign of the tumor, allowing T-cells to attack the cancerous growth.
“Those drugs block the tumor’s ability to hide from the body’s immune system,” Soloff said.
The drugs alone are proving highly effective in some cancers, with a roughly 25% overall response rate and greatly extending life expectancies in patients with melanoma and lung cancer. The idea is to combine the drugs with Soloff’s vaccine to eliminate breast cancers.
Dr. Soloff’s approach to creating a new vaccine uses a virus called an adenovirus which normally would cause symptoms of a common cold. Soloff then removes the genes from the virus which allow it to replicate, and in their place adds back the gene which will produce the MUC1 target found on breast cancer cells. When the vaccine is administered, the body immediately recognizes the virus as a threat and mounts an immune attack against it. But, while it is responding to the virus shell, the body is also learning to fight off the MUC1 component of the breast cancer which is stored inside. By delivering the tumor target inside of a virus shell, the body sees the tumor target as a foreign invader and not something which came from itself. This “Trojan Horse Method” is a safe and effective way to teach the T-cells to fight the tumor.
This vaccine will also create an immune memory so the body will remember this threat, and will automatically fight it if it arises again — therefore preventing the recurrence of breast cancer.
“One of the wonderful things about your body’s immune system is it remembers,” Soloff said. “If it ever sees that threat again, the killer cell expands.”
This same vaccine can be potentially used to treat other cancers as long as the cancer expresses MUC1. Ultimately, if the vaccine is successful targeting MUC1, different targets can be added to make the vaccine stronger or target other cancers.
“The first thing to do is prove it is safe and effective,” Soloff said.
Immunotherapy is the revolution, and Soloff sees it as the future. Currently, immunotherapy is paired with chemotherapy, surgery and radiation. Soloff predicts that one day immunotherapy will be used on its own.
“I am optimistic that through immunotherapy we will start to see cures for cancers that were previously unbeatable,” Soloff said. The vaccine has been developed and is now being tested on mice, added Soloff. If successful, the next step is human studies.
According to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which is funding Soloff’s research, their efforts are focused on finding new treatments for the most hostile forms of breast cancer. The foundation funds causes that assist in understanding the disease, and causes that are working towards fighting it. Also, the foundation’s goal includes research towards technology that can detect breast cancer in its early stages.
Soloff is not alone in his quest to find ways to cure breast cancer. Other breast cancer research around the world includes ways to prevent, detect and treat breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. This also includes research that studies the causes of breast cancer, how to reduce risks, new imaging tests for treatment, and ways to improve the quality of life of patients and survivors.