The therapy, which was developed in Chile by a team of researchers led by the Dr Salazar – who is also a scientific advisor to Oncobiomed, a biotechnology company that has been part of the project since its inception- will begin its clinical studies in Brazil under the supervision of the National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA), which is a pioneer in the regulation of medicinal products at the regional level.
In this regard, Salazar explained that the initiative began in 2003 with the first patient to be treated at the Clinical Hospital of the University of Chile, “and has been accumulating a series of results from scientific research that have resulted in patents , in initiatives that have been transferred to society”.
Along these lines, he highlighted that “The step we are taking today is an association that was achieved with one of the most important cancer health centers in Brazil, with an enormous scope, they provide 18,000 monthly services to cancer patients and we have agreed to work together to carry out the trial phase three in Brazil and treat patients worldwide”.
Regarding the therapy itself, the academic explained that “what we invented was a way of taking blood from patients, educating them in special laboratories through different factors that we added to it, that transforms some cells that are antigen presenters and capable of giving an immune response against tumors, and that we re-inject it as a kind of vaccine in patients mainly with melanoma, skin cancer, also prostate cancer.
“Now we are working with the Hospital Clínico with gallbladder cancer and in the long run we hope to be able to treat other solid tumors because the technology allows certain variables“he added.
In this way, Salazar highlighted that “deep down we are taking a super important step, because Brazil has a population that is 10 times that of Chile, there are much more patients and it is much easier to carry out a phase three study in that country”.
Specifying what melanoma is, the specialist pointed to “one of the cancers -which is not the most common, the most common skin cancer is basal cell- which is not so metastatic, not so deadly, because it can be removed and it does not generate invasion of other tissues”.
However, he pointed out that “melanoma is a cancer that begins in a cell called melanocytes, which are the ones that give the skin pigmentation when we sunbathe and that is transformed into tumors and those are very malignant and therefore very deadly, and when the tumor is not detected in time, it turns out that it metastasizes to the lungs, liver and other areas and it is in these stages when immunological therapy plays an important role and ours among them”.
For the rest, Salazar explained that the flexible nature of the TAPcells therapy, “It means that deep down it can be adapted to different types of cancer.”
“The technology has a part that is made up of a process, which is the one patented by the University of Chile (…) to produce TAPcells from the blood of patients, but there is also an element that is an industrial secret, which is how we take tumors and add it to this vaccine in the laboratory so that they incorporate them and give the correct signals”.
“Now if you feed melanoma cell products into this vaccine and inject it into a melanoma patient, you’re going to have a melanoma response, but if the mixture is mixed with gallbladder cancer cells, or with colon cancer cells, or with ovarian cancer cells, the cells will give signals against those cancers, therefore theoretically one could make this same vaccine adapted for different types of cancer”.
Asked about how close science is to finding a cure for cancer, the academic commented that “there is an arsenal of different strategies that have been developed worldwide that aim to improve the treatment capabilities of these cancers.”
“Now, cancer in general is a multifactorial issue,” he said, pointing out that “you can not only attack it with a remedy, a pill or a strategy that will cure cancer; Cancer must be prevented and for that there are risk factors, so healthy living, living conditions in the city, the end of slaughter zones, there are a lot of elements that contribute to a sharp decrease in the incidence of cancer and with that we can control the problem on a large scale.”
Regarding the remaining cases, he indicated that “current medicine, with all these advances in bioinformatics, measurement methodologies, They are going to make it possible to establish more and more knowledge regarding what are the essential factors that must be attacked in order to have more effective therapies”.
However, the doctor noted that “Cancer is something that will accompany us throughout our history, because it is a by-product of people’s lives.It’s like aging, there will always be some cases of cancer, the important thing is to first try to avoid them, keep the population well informed and, on the other hand, have therapies that can help in the different stages of the development of the disease”.
Check the interview here:
