Expensive and, potentially, priceless...

Skin and kidney cancer patients enrolled in clinical trials at the University of Minnesota receive material from their own tumor cells to fight recurrences of their cancers. “We’re manipulating natural processes to activate killer cells and direct them toward the cancer,” says Matthew Mescher, director of the U’s Center for Immunology. And ultimately, he’d like to direct the power of these killer cells beyond individuals to target populations of patients.

Starting more than 10 years ago and working in mouse models of disease, Mescher led the way to development of a novel personalized cancer vaccine. His scientific discoveries focused on techniques to identify and then multiply valuable killer cells through sophisticated laboratory techniques. Now, his collaborators Drs. Arkadiusz Dudek and Jeffrey Miller treat people with skin and kidney cancer enrolled in clinical trials. They receive material from their own cancer cells coated onto beads that act like artificial cells to activate the killer cells.

“Patients are very savvy these days,” says Mescher. “They really shop for clinical trials.” While the physicians and scientists involved can only compare to historical data, these stage 1 clinical trials demonstrate some promising results. People with advanced stages of cancer are surviving longer than previously expected--up to three times longer.

Yet the number of patients in the clinical trials is very small; this is just the start of testing these treatments. For the next stage, this treatment approach will have to be tested at multiple sites, which is a very expensive process. 

And, as Mescher points out, this treatment may prove to be worthwhile for individuals, but, in its current customized approach, it is expensive and the high technical needs may limit widespread adoption. In the future, it would be even better if, by tackling problems in genetics, he and his colleagues could develop a vaccine that could treat large numbers of people with these deadly cancers.

Today, these clinical trials offer hope to individuals suffering from cancer--and important information for scientists seeking to improve future treatments.