Brain cancer trials at King’s College show vaccine can prolong life

A vaccine trialled at King’s College Hospital using patients’ immune cells to target brain cancer can extend survival by many months or, in some cases, years, results have shown.  

The conclusions were published this week in the Journal of American Medical Association Oncology following the trails at King’s in Camberwell, and other centres around the world. 

This is the first time in 17 years that such significant outcomes have been achieved in a Phase Three trial for a systemic treatment in any newly diagnosed brain cancer glioblastoma, and the first time in 27 years that any treatment has been shown to extend survival.

The vaccine – DCVax-®L – is created for each patient individually by isolating specific immune cells from their blood.

These cells are then primed with a sample of the patient’s tumour. When the vaccine containing the cells is injected back into the patient, it shares that information so that the body’s entire immune system recognises and attacks the target.  

The vaccine was trialled for eight years, and involved more than 300 patients from the UK, USA, Canada and Germany – all of whom had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain tumour in adults.  

Thirteen per cent of patients treated with the vaccine survived at least five years from diagnosis compared to 5.7 per cent in the control group, with the longest survivor surpassing eight years.      

Unlike chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the vast majority of patients reported no side-effects from the immunotherapy vaccine.  

Professor Ashkan, Professor of Neurosurgery at King’s, and European chief investigator of the clinical trial, said: “Immunotherapy is a very promising approach for treating cancer, and the final results of this trail offer fresh hope to patients battling with glioblastoma.”

Pictured top: King’s College (Picture: Wikimedia Commons / Reading Tom from Reading, UK)