If it proves effective in laboratory tests, the vaccine will move on to clinical trials
London by Thanasis Gavou
The first vaccine to prevent lung cancer in high-risk people aspires to prepare researchers in the UK, as the public health system NHS in England has started to offer a new test blood that indicates the best treatment for the same type of cancer.
The scientists from University of Oxford, the Francis Crick Institute and UCL University of London are using a method similar to the AstraZeneca-developed coronavirus vaccine to make ‘LungVax’.
This vaccine works by activating the immune system so that it recognizes specific proteins (neoantigens) that are an indication of lung cancer and kills the cancer cells that contain them (on their surface), before they form a tumor in the lung.
If it proves effective in laboratory tests, the vaccine will move on to clinical trials.
The survey has received £1.7m in funding from British Cancer Foundations.
Each year 48,500 cases of lung cancer are diagnosed in the UK, with 72% of them linked to smoking. The researchers emphasize that even with the vaccine working, “the best way to avoid lung cancer is to stop smoking.”
In the meantime, 2,000,000 patients in England with an initial diagnosis of lung cancer have undergone a new blood test which shows whether they can be offered some targeted treatment early on.
The test looks for particular genetic traits so that doctors can decide whether a patient would benefit more from treatment with pills instead of chemotherapy, with significantly fewer side effects.
The blood test will be offered within the year to another 10,000 patients who are thought to have lung cancer at an initial diagnosis, in hospitals across 80 NHS England regional units.
The goal is for analytical results to be returned to patients within 14 days.
As they reported to the BBC doctors involved in the new method, early recognition of the possibility of targeted therapies has already begun to improve the life expectancy of patients with certain types of lung cancer.
This type of blood tests, which are also known as “wet biopsies”could be extended to cases of breast cancer and childhood cancer.
Source :Skai
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