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Gene therapy is a medical technology that aims to produce a therapeutic effect through the manipulation of gene expression or through altering the biological properties of living cells.
Immunotherapy or biological therapy is the treatment of disease by activating or suppressing the immune system. Immunotherapies designed to elicit or amplify an immune response are classified as activation immunotherapies, while immunotherapies that reduce or suppress are classified as suppression immunotherapies. Immunotherapy is under preliminary research for its potential to treat various forms of cancer.
Head and neck cancer is a general term encompassing multiple cancers that can develop in the head and neck region. These include cancers of the mouth, tongue, gums and lips, voice box (laryngeal), throat, salivary glands, nose and sinuses. Head and neck cancer can present a wide range of symptoms depending on where the cancer developed.These can include an ulcer in the mouth that does not heal, changes in the voice, difficulty swallowing, red or white patches in the mouth, and a neck lump.
A cancer vaccine, or oncovaccine, is a vaccine that either treats existing cancer or prevents development of cancer. Vaccines that treat existing cancer are known as therapeutic cancer vaccines or tumor antigen vaccines. Some of the vaccines are "autologous", being prepared from samples taken from the patient, and are specific to that patient.
In medicine, proton therapy, or proton radiotherapy, is a type of particle therapy that uses a beam of protons to irradiate diseased tissue, most often to treat cancer. The chief advantage of proton therapy over other types of external beam radiotherapy is that the dose of protons is deposited over a narrow range of depth; hence in minimal entry, exit, or scattered radiation dose to healthy nearby tissues.
Cancer immunotherapy (immuno-oncotherapy) is the stimulation of the immune system to treat cancer, improving the immune system's natural ability to fight the disease. It is an application of the fundamental research of cancer immunology (immuno-oncology) and a growing subspecialty of oncology.
An oncolytic virus is a virus that preferentially infects and kills cancer cells. As the infected cancer cells are destroyed by oncolysis, they release new infectious virus particles or virions to help destroy the remaining tumour. Oncolytic viruses are thought not only to cause direct destruction of the tumour cells, but also to stimulate host anti-tumour immune system responses. Oncolytic viruses also have the ability to affect the tumor micro-environment in multiple ways.
Targeted therapy or molecularly targeted therapy is one of the major modalities of medical treatment (pharmacotherapy) for cancer, others being hormonal therapy and cytotoxic chemotherapy. As a form of molecular medicine, targeted therapy blocks the growth of cancer cells by interfering with specific targeted molecules needed for carcinogenesis and tumor growth, rather than by simply interfering with all rapidly dividing cells. Because most agents for targeted therapy are biopharmaceuticals, the term biologic therapy is sometimes synonymous with targeted therapy when used in the context of cancer therapy. However, the modalities can be combined; antibody-drug conjugates combine biologic and cytotoxic mechanisms into one targeted therapy.
Adjuvant therapy, also known as adjunct therapy, adjuvant care, or augmentation therapy, is a therapy that is given in addition to the primary or initial therapy to maximize its effectiveness. The surgeries and complex treatment regimens used in cancer therapy have led the term to be used mainly to describe adjuvant cancer treatments. An example of such adjuvant therapy is the additional treatment usually given after surgery where all detectable disease has been removed, but where there remains a statistical risk of relapse due to the presence of undetected disease. If known disease is left behind following surgery, then further treatment is not technically adjuvant.
Gustav Gaudernack is a scientist working in the development of cancer vaccines and cancer immunotherapy. He has developed various strategies in immunological treatment of cancer. He is involved in several ongoing cellular and immuno-gene therapeutic clinical trials and his research group has put major efforts into the development of various T cell-based immunotherapeutic strategies.
Nivolumab, sold under the brand name Opdivo, is an anti-cancer medication used to treat a number of types of cancer. This includes melanoma, lung cancer, malignant pleural mesothelioma, renal cell carcinoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, head and neck cancer, urothelial carcinoma, colon cancer, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, liver cancer, gastric cancer, and esophageal or gastroesophageal junction cancer. It is administered intravenously.
Pembrolizumab, sold under the brand name Keytruda, is a humanized antibody used in cancer immunotherapy that treats melanoma, lung cancer, head and neck cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, stomach cancer, cervical cancer, and certain types of breast cancer. It is administered by slow intravenous injection.
Moderna, Inc. is a pharmaceutical and biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that focuses on RNA therapeutics, primarily mRNA vaccines. These vaccines use a copy of a molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA) to carry instructions for proteins to produce an immune response. The company's name is derived from the terms "modified", "RNA", and "modern".
Checkpoint inhibitor therapy is a form of cancer immunotherapy. The therapy targets immune checkpoints, key regulators of the immune system that when stimulated can dampen the immune response to an immunologic stimulus. Some cancers can protect themselves from attack by stimulating immune checkpoint targets. Checkpoint therapy can block inhibitory checkpoints, restoring immune system function. The first anti-cancer drug targeting an immune checkpoint was ipilimumab, a CTLA4 blocker approved in the United States in 2011.
Individualized medicine tailors treatment to a single patient. The term refers to an individual, truly personalized medicine that strives to treat each patient on the basis of his own individual biology.
Individualized cancer immunotherapy, also referred to as individualized immuno-oncology, is a novel concept for therapeutic cancer vaccines that are truly personalized to a single individual.
A therapeutic vaccine is a vaccine which is administered after a disease or infection has already occurred. A therapeutic vaccine works by activating the immune system of a patient to fight an infection. A therapeutic vaccine differs from a prophylactic vaccine in that prophylactic vaccines are administered to individuals as a precautionary measure to avoid the infection or disease while therapeutic vaccines are administered after the individual is already affected by the disease or infection. A therapeutic vaccine fights an existing infection in the body rather than immunizing the body for protection against future diseases and infections. Therapeutic vaccines are mostly used against viral infections. Patients affected with chronic viral infections are administered with therapeutic vaccines, as their immune system is not able to produce enough efficient antibodies.
Cellular adoptive immunotherapy is a type of immunotherapy. Immune cells such as T-cells are usually isolated from patients for expansion or engineering purposes and reinfused back into patients to fight diseases using their own immune system. A major application of cellular adoptive therapy is cancer treatment, as the immune system plays a vital role in the development and growth of cancer. The primary types of cellular adoptive immunotherapies are T cell therapies. Other therapies include CAR-T therapy, CAR-NK therapy, macrophage-based immunotherapy and dendritic cell therapy.
mRNA-4157/V940 is an mRNA based cancer vaccine encapsulated in solid lipid nanoparticles. The 34 mRNA sequences in mRNA-4157/V940 vaccine were generated by an automated algorithm integrated with workflow based on massive parallel sequencing of tissue generated from cancer patients. As adjuvant therapy, mRNA-4157 monotherapy and in combination with pembrolizumab have been investigated in patients with resected solid tumors. It was also investigated in patients with HNSCC and MSS-CRC.
Autogene cevumeran is an investigational mRNA vaccine being developed jointly by BioNTech and Genentech as an adjuvant therapy in cancer treatment to prevent cancer recurrence following surgery.
References
- ↑ Yao, Ruhui; Xie, Chunyuan; Xia, Xiaojun (2024-12-31). "Recent progress in mRNA cancer vaccines". Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics. 20 (1). doi:10.1080/21645515.2024.2307187. ISSN 2164-5515. PMC 10826636 . PMID 38282471.
- ↑ Kang, Ning; Zhang, Si; Wang, Yuzhuo (2023). "A personalized mRNA vaccine has exhibited potential in the treatment of pancreatic cancer". Holistic Integrative Oncology. 2 (1): 18. doi:10.1007/s44178-023-00042-z. ISSN 2731-4529. PMC 10248956 . PMID 37323470.
- ↑ Shibata, Hirofumi; Zhou, Liye; Xu, Na; Egloff, Ann Marie; Uppaluri, Ravindra (March 2021). "Personalized cancer vaccination in head and neck cancer". Cancer Science. 112 (3): 978–988. doi:10.1111/cas.14784. ISSN 1349-7006. PMC 7935792 . PMID 33368875.
- ↑ Carvalho, Thiago (2023-08-16). "Personalized anti-cancer vaccine combining mRNA and immunotherapy tested in melanoma trial". Nature Medicine. 29 (10): 2379–2380. doi:10.1038/d41591-023-00072-0. PMID 37773210.
- ↑ Walsh, Fergus (2024-05-30). "Thousands to trial personalised cancer vaccines". BBC News. Retrieved 2024-06-01.
