The Malinois Rax (10) suffered from bone cancer, but three months after the administration of a cancer vaccine, the dog seems to be cured. The Medical Center for Animals in Amsterdam has given a vaccine for the first time to a dog with cancer after a tumor has been removed. The result gives the researchers hope.
“The owners let us know that he is back to his old self,” says Arjan Griffioen, professor of experimental oncology at Amsterdam UMC, who is involved in the research. “This dog is just one example, but the use of the cancer vaccine on dogs with bladder cancer has also shown good results for the time being.”
If this vaccine is successful in large groups of dogs, the next step is to conduct a clinical trial in humans. “Our immune system is very similar to that of a dog. The development of cancer is also the same, which is not always the case in mice and rats,” says Griffioen.
Important development
But Sjoerd van der Burg, professor of immunotherapy at Leiden University, has reservations about the result. “First the tumor was removed from the dog, then the vaccine was administered. Then you cannot speak of a cure.” The professor was not involved in the research, and is working on the development of other cancer vaccines himself.
Van der Burg does see the potential in testing therapeutic cancer vaccines on dogs with cancer as laboratory animals. “If it does work in dogs, that’s an important development.” According to the professor, this specific vaccine could work in humans if a tumor is first removed and the vaccine is then used to prevent the growth of new tumors.
The development of cancer vaccines is not aimed at prevention, like a shot for cervical cancer, but to repair the immune system. Dog Rax was given a vaccine containing a protein that only occurs in tumors, and not in the rest of our body. This should put the immune system to work. According to Griffioen, this is a new way to fight cancer in humans.
Future of Cancer Vaccines
According to Griffioen, the advantages of using a vaccine are great compared to using chemotherapy. Chemotherapy destroys not only tumor cells, but also healthy cells in the body. “A vaccine is a form of ‘smart’ therapy.” A vaccine also causes far fewer side effects. “A vaccination only causes local swelling and a temporary fever, just like a corona vaccine.”
Leiden professor Van der Burg expects that in the future vaccines will be used together with chemotherapy or other forms of immunotherapy. “In the Netherlands, a large group of researchers and companies is involved in the development of cancer vaccines,” he says.
The first cancer vaccines are already available, for example for prostate cancer. “We’ve come quite a long way. Between now and about ten years, the first really effective therapeutic cancer vaccines will be in use.”
–
