Thirty years ago the Argentine scientist José Mordoh focused on one goal: cure a type of cancer, cutaneous melanomawith a immunotherapy treatment that uses the immune system to attack diseased cells. In the next monthsthe drug will be available in Argentina in vaccine serum. It will be produced on a scale, for the country and the region, by the Cassará laboratory, under the name Vaccimel. The doctor Joseph Mordoh –who led the project– is Senior researcher at Conicet and head of the Cancerology Laboratory at the Leloir Institute Foundation. In dialogue with the program On the way back (Radio 2)gave details of the first Argentine vaccine against the most aggressive skin cancer. In addition, he expressed solidarity with the people of Rosario, in the face of the escalation of violence that affects the city and closed with a message in favor of life.
It is the first Argentine vaccine against the most aggressive skin cancer.
Everyone congratulates him on the achievement of the vaccine, but Mordoh, who was disciple of the Argentine Nobel Prize winner Luis F. Leloir and, in his youth, of the French Nobel Prize winner François Jacob, does not lose sight of the city with which he maintains telephone contact, in the framework of the radio interview: “First of all I want to express my solidarity with the city of Rosario, who is having a difficult time. “All my humble support for that beautiful city and its people, who gave so many talents to Argentina,” he says at the beginning, and recounts the genesis of a professional task as constant as it is effective.
Vaccimel: therapeutic vaccine
“This is a challenge that we undertook thirty years ago. A long road that started from the conviction that at that time few people in the world had, that immunotherapy could achieve something in the fight against cancer. It was a time when that was not thought about. We were advancing in that area, in the idea that we had to do a vaccine that was therapeutic. This means that it is not applied to people to prevent a disease, but is aimed at those who already have melanoma and they are going through the early stages of the disease. That is the difference – he explains – between a therapeutic vaccine (Vaccimel) and the preventive vaccines like those applied for the flu, covid, etc.”
In the thirty years that the development of the vaccine took, there were a series of stages that must be completed: vaccine design, laboratory tests, tests on experimental animals and only later, tests on humans. Finally, in a clinical trial that ended in 2016the team managed to show that the vaccine obtained was more effective than the drug that was used at the time –interferon– to prevent them from appearing metastasis. “Metastasis,” he clarifies, “means that a malignant cell that has the property of dividing traveled through the blood and spread throughout the body. It may remain there for a while until it finally grows and then yes, we are all in trouble: patients and doctors.”
How the vaccine works
Vaccimel makes the immune system wake upthat recognizes that there is disseminated tumor cells through the body and makes elements to light up. It is what the immune system normally has to do, but it in the case of cancer (compared to a bacteria or a virus) the researcher observes, this mechanism is lazier. Since the tumor cells come from the same person, the immune system has a hard time differentiating friend from foe.
“Is a slow learning stagewhich lasts months, in which the immune system must be taught to recognize tumor cells as something that must be destroyed. To begin with, he does not know how to do that job and the function of the vaccine is to teach him that capacity for distinction. That – he affirms – was the most difficult part of the history of this development.”
Regarding the doseIn total, a little more than ten applications are made, which at first are carried out more frequently (once every three weeks, for four months) and then are spaced out: once every two months during the first year; and in the second year, as a booster dose, once every three months. Thus, the body already has the defenses to prevent those cells that have spread from being eliminated.
Vaccimel, melanoma and the next challenge
The vaccine is designed for melanoma, but It does not apply to other types of cancer. Because? Each type of cancer It comes from different tissues and each human tissue, each organ, differs from the other, even coming from the same stem cell, “because He has “a different suit” (expresses different molecules, has different substances on the surface, etc.). So, For now (hopefully we will get a universal vaccine) each vaccine must be developed to recognize the difference between melanoma, breast cancer or lung cancer, for example. The system can be the same, but a specific design must be made for each tumor,” explains Mordoh.
These advances indicate that we must work and that science must be supported.
He adds that currently, they are very busy putting the finishing touches on the launch that we hope will take place in a couple of months. Then the idea is begin testing vaccine designs for other difficult-to-treat tumors.
The vaccine is produced on a scale, for the country and the region, in the Cassará laboratory, under the name Vaccimel.
“When we started working on this tumor, thirty years ago, melanoma was like the bogeyman of cancers. There were no treatments available, nor much knowledge, and today, it is a curable disease. That is the great advance. It is not always curable, but There is a very significant number of people who are cured.. Transforming a cancer that thirty years ago was a nightmare into a disease that can be fought as equals is a very important advance. This indicates – he emphasizes – that we have to work and that science must be supported. That all the knowledge that is accumulated throughout the world, in the end converges in that; “in which a disease that was incurable can now be curable.”
Early detection and targeted chemotherapy
Aside from the vaccine, the scientist points out that the most effective of all is the early diagnostic. “That people learn to recognize the early stages of melanoma, to pay attention to the appearance of a spot on the skin that changes color or grows very quickly. If it is detected early, if one is attentive to it, with the surgery It is cured in almost one hundred percent of cases. “That is the most effective,” he points out.
In relation to the prospects of the chemotherapy in general, Mordoh described his limitations for quite some time. “Chemotherapy in general had not given many results until the sequencing of the human genome occurred, a development that lasted a decade, and allowed us know all the genes we have in the body. We still do not know well how they interact with each other, but we do know that each human organism has approximately twenty thousand genes and around 2010, thanks to this knowledge, it was possible to find out that half of melanomas have an altered gene, and that gene allowed us to learn a lot about how a melanoma cell works. It also allowed the development targeted chemotherapies (drugs intended to block that altered gene). That was a first big breakthrough. Chemotherapy generally works poorly in melanoma, but these specific targeted chemotherapies against a specific gene, They work well in those who have this alteration. That was the first great advance that changed the history of melanoma.”
Early diagnosis of melanoma is essential.
The second advance came when we began to know more how melanoma interacts with the immune system, how it blocks it and how you can wake up the immune system. “It is already known that there are monoclonal antibodies that when they are injected they can awaken the immune system, and now we are at the stage of vaccines that work like a warning bell that tells you: «Look, there is something strange here; Get your act together,” she explains didactically.
At the end of the interview, which was fed back with questions from radio listeners and congratulations to the research team, the researcher was invited to put a musical end to the dialogue and did not hesitate to choose «Live Is life»song by the Austrian band Opus, released in 1984. “I choose «Live is life» –says Mordoh– because it applies to the vaccine and to Rosario too –he says in closing–: It is a time to listen to something that gives us a little encouragement in life.”
2024-03-17 11:50:00
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