| Summary: | Cancer: Turning tumors into vaccines Therapeutic vaccines derived from tumor cells could provide a personalized strategy for training the immune system to find and destroy cancer. Past efforts to develop such vaccines have been hampered by the challenge of identifying tumor-specific proteins that elicit a strong immune response. To overcome this, Byung-Soo Kim and colleagues at Seoul National University pursued a strategy in which they subjected tumor cells to chemical treatments that halted proliferation and stimulated production of immunity-activating signaling molecules. The cells were then broken up into membrane-encased fragments filled with tumor-derived biomolecules. Mice dosed with such vaccines, which carry a diverse mix of antigens, showed a potent anti-cancer response, resulting in tumor cell death and significantly improved survival. By treating cells from patient biopsies in this fashion, clinicians could potentially derive potent, individually tailored tumor vaccines.
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