Cancer vaccine developed to boost patients' lifespan

Moscow: Russian scientists have developed a vaccine for the treatment of cancer that can increase the patient's lifespan more than two-fold, ITAR-TASS reported Wednesday.

The vaccine, developed at the Institute of Clinical Immunology in the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in Novosibirsk, has already successfully passed clinical tests, said institute's director Vladimir Kozlov.

Currently, it is being administered to patients by injection at the third and fourth stages of cancer.

"We are deriving dendritic cells from the human body and loading them with tumour antigens," Kozlov said.

"Dendritic cells process them, then we inject the cells into the patient and they start working in the body evoking a strong immune response. That is, they are actively fighting the tumour."

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The institute's creation "is not a classical vaccine, which is the means to prevent the illness", Kozlov said. "In fact, it is a cell therapy."

The vaccine is counteracting several types of cancer - colorectal (bowel) cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer - and the institute is ready to start its industrial production, Kozlov added.

However, the scientist added that other types of therapy were to be used as well, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

IANS