Immune cells to fight leukemia
By Nathan Seppa
From Atlanta, at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology
A cancer “vaccine” that uses small proteins found in abundance on the surface of leukemia cells shows strong signs of keeping the blood cancer at bay if given when the disease is in remission.
Cancer vaccines attempt to rally a person’s immune cells to fight a malignancy. Researchers gave the vaccine to 13 leukemia patients in remission and 53 others who had active disease. All the patients had received other drugs previously. Although some were in remission, none was a good candidate for continued standard treatment because all had advanced leukemia, says study coauthor Muzaffar H. Qazilbash, a hematology oncologist at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.