A study was recently published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine outlining Dr. Joachim Aerts’ work in the immunotherapy arena of cancer treatment. The research specifically dealt with the development of a vaccination for mesothelioma, an aggressive and terminal cancer which affects several thousands of Americans each year. The study demonstrated the vaccine’s efficacy in increasing antibodies against the disease, and in some cases decreasing the size of the cancerous tumor.
Mesothelioma is caused by exposure to asbestos fibers. The body’s normal defense mechanisms are unable to expel the microscopic, needle like fibers, and upon ingestion or inhalation they pass through the lungs or intestines and become lodged in a protective soft tissue known as the mesothelium. The asbestos fibers cause tissue scarring which can develop into malignant tumors over the course of years or even decades.
Dr Joachim Aerts and his colleagues have performed valuable research which shows that a cancer patient’s own immune system can potentially be employed to help destroy malignant tumors. Previous tests caused mice with cancerous tumors to develop the antigens necessary to combat their disease.
The new vaccine interacts with patient’s dendritic cells to help produce the antigens to the cancerous tumors in a patient’s mesothelium. Dr Joachim, a lung specialist at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Holland, and the author of the study, hopes that his approach will allow a patient’s own immune system to defeat the disease. If treatments such as this one prove to be successful, the need for conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy that weaken and sicken the patient could be reduced.
According to Dr Joachim, employing a patient’s own immune system in the battle against their mesothelioma is part of a fairly new branch of cancer treatment known as immunotherapy. The new vaccine shows that the concept is viable and takes steps towards providing a less strenuous treatment alternative to current conventions that cause far fewer side effects. Patients with mesothelioma are rarely expected to live more than two years; Aerts hopes that treatments such as this could improve those numbers and provide some new hope for mesothelioma patients and their families.
Aerts addressed some of the possible drawbacks of the new vaccine, mentioning the complication presented by immunosuppressive disorders and the body’s struggle in study participants to deliver the newly developed antigens effectively to the site of the tumor. The scarring of the patient’s mesothelium and the tumor itself often create an environment somewhat isolated from body systems which reduces the treatments efficacy. Despite these concerns immunotherapy for mesothelioma continues to show considerable promise.
