“Sevillian Hospital Leads the Way in Lung Cancer Vaccine and Immunotherapy Treatment”

Cancer research is advancing and, with it, Sevillian public health has positioned itself at the global pinnacle of these advances. The Virgen Macarena Hospital has become a spearhead at the national level in the application of a new treatment against the most aggressive type of tumor and the one that causes the highest mortality: lung cancer. He Medical Oncology service has just enrolled the first patient in the country to receive a vaccine against this type of tumor. The novelty, the type of technique used, which provokes an immune response through the messenger RNA, the same one that was used to develop vaccines to curb the coronavirus with very good results.

The essay, which has already including some patients in the USwhere the study began, will be launched in the Seville center after this type of treatment has demonstrated its effectiveness for the first time. efficacy in patients with melanoma, as recently published at an international medical congress on oncology, precisely in the United States. What this therapeutic solution would do would be, through messenger RNA, train the body itself to fight against tumor cells. Another way to reach the same result as the most advanced therapies to date, which are immunotherapies.

Behind this advance in the Macarena is the doctor david vincent baz, responsible for the clinical trial at the Sevillian center, and head of the Medical Oncology Section, as well as director of the Cancer Strategy in Andalusia. “This technology is being investigated in many more types of cancer, but lung cancer is the one that causes the most mortality in the world and has the worst prognosis. However, it is also, together with melanoma, the cancer in which the immunotherapy better works. It is key, because these vaccines are not given alone, they are accompanied by immunotherapy,” explains the oncologist.

Messenger RNA technology

The messenger RNA vaccine is designed through the antigens who have the tumor cells within its surface. The most frequent are taken and, on them, these vaccines are manufactured that have the same technology as those used against Covid, which reduces its toxicity. Along these lines, the specialist points out that the trial will consist of injecting this messenger RNA into the body of those patients already diagnosed with lung cancer, that is, it is not a preventive therapy for the disease. From here they will be their own defenses which they try to combat that alteration introduced through a vaccine. That is to say, “trying to demonstrate that the organisms of the selected patients can eliminate the cancer”, adds Dr. Vicente Baz. To increase its effectiveness, the experimental vaccine is not applied by itself, but is accompanied by immunotherapy.

The oncologist explains that there are other, more preliminary studies that are being worked on in personalized vaccines, that is, one for each patient, since the type of technique used allows it. However, in the trial that the lung cancer center in Seville has just opened, the efficacy of the same vaccine is going to be studied for all patients with lung cancer.

Regarding the patient’s profile, the oncologist emphasizes that this is an investigation that is beginning in this type of tumor and that it cannot be generalized. “The study is focused on a very specific type of patient to whom the rest of the treatments have not been useful and with some special characteristics. It’s not for everyone,” he stresses. “It’s a very complex study and the beneficiaries have to meet a series of very strict requirements because it is the first time this type of therapy has been tested in humans. There are very few centers in Spain that are working on the application of vaccines with this technology against cancer and, in Andalusia, our center is the only one. We are talking Worldwide between 20 to 30 patients that may be included in the trials. It is important to know that it is the first time it has been tested to see if it really has the efficacy that we think it has, “she defends.

“Very Promising” Results

Thus, although he qualifies the results of this type of therapy as “very promising”the head of the Macarena Medical Oncology Section calls for caution in the face of the million dollar question: When will this treatment be widely used in patients with lung cancer?. “We don’t know what will happen. It looks very good, yes, because completely change the perception that we have of the current treatment of the disease. They are very novel treatments, which usually have very little toxicity, but they are very complex to carry out”, he indicates.

Although it still has a long way to go, and also to demonstrate, living up to the high expectations placed in it by a scientific community, which is also aware of its limitations, messenger RNA technology is beginning to show the first signs of success. its great potential. “I think it will be revolutionarywhich can change patient expectations from now to a while if everything goes as we hope, as it happened with the Covid. I think it will allow us to do things that were completely forbidden before, as in the specific case of melanoma, which reduces mortality by half. Being able to take advantage of what we have learned from the coronavirus is very good and, just that, it is already a step in science,” says the Macarena oncologist.

According to data from the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM), lung cancer is among the most frequently diagnosed cancers in Spain. Specifically, according to forecasts for this year, they will diagnose 31,282 new cases. However, due to its high mortality, this type of tumor is responsible for the highest number of deaths worldwide, 18.2% of all cancer deaths. It is followed, far behind, by colorectal cancer (9.5%), liver cancer (8.4%), stomach cancer (7.8%) and breast cancer (6.9%).