A patient in the UK is receiving what doctors are calling the first ‘personally customised’ cancer vaccine.
The ground-breaking clinical trial at the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Liverpool is using a series of specific personalised subcutaneous injections – custom-made to the man’s own DNA and delivered beneath the skin – to prevent his recurring head and neck cancer from coming back.
The treatment is designed to train an individual’s body to recognise and defend that body from these specific cancers.
Father of 5 children, Graham Booth first received a diagnosis of head and neck cancer in 2011 and despite treatment including facial surgery, reconstruction and radiation therapy, the cancer returned 4 more times.
Over the next year, he will continue to receive the customised immunotherapy injections and, if the vaccine is successful, it will train his immune system to prevent the cancer from recurring.
Professor Christian Ottensmeier is overseeing the trial and told medicalnewstoday.com: ‘This is important and potentially game-changing research.
‘To have reached the stage of a patient receiving this treatment – that only a few years ago was thought of as science fiction – is truly amazing.’
Although Mr Booth is the first participant in this clinical trial, Professor Ottensmeier said the researchers are adding more patients and noted: ‘It is wonderful that we have been able to move from the theoretical stage of this research into creating a treatment for real people.’
The Liverpool Echo reported Professor Ottensmeier believes this treatment will have ‘far fewer side effects’ compared with other cancer treatments because, unlike chemotherapy and radiation therapy, healthy tissue and cells should not sustain damage. AMP
