interesting findings from the Walter Reed/Windber vaccine team

[Lani]

the vaccine seems to decrease Tregulatory cells, which is advantageous in fighting breast cancer (although it theoretically could increase chances of autoimmune disease) and increases Tcells in general

This is all very poorly understood, but the bottom line is that it seems to have all the right effects (as much as wel understand them) on getting a patient's own immune system to fight the cancer

PS and this team is the only one as far as I know that has a vaccine for those with early breast cancer vs metastatic breast cancer only

Comments?

1: Cancer Immunol Immunother. 2006 Jun 17; [Epub ahead of print] Related Articles, Links

Analysis of naive and memory CD4 and CD8 T cell populations in breast cancer patients receiving a HER2/neu peptide (E75) and GM-CSF vaccine.

Hueman MT, Stojadinovic A, Storrer CE, Dehqanzada ZA, Gurney JM, Shriver CD, Ponniah S, Peoples GE.

Clinical Breast Care Project, Department of Surgery, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC, 20307, USA.

We are conducting clinical trials of the E75 peptide as a vaccine in breast cancer (BrCa) patients. We assessed T cell subpopulations in BrCa patients before and after E75 vaccination and compared them to healthy controls. We obtained 17 samples of blood from ten healthy individuals and samples from 22 BrCa patients prior to vaccination. We also obtained pre- and post-vaccination samples of blood from seven BrCa patients who received the E75/GM-CSF vaccine. CD4, CD8, CD45RA, CD45RO, and CCR7 antibodies were used to analyze the CD4+ and CD8+ T cells by four-color flow cytometry. Compared to healthy individuals, BrCa patients have significantly more memory and less naive T cells and more effector-memory CD8+ and less effector CD4+ T cells. Phenotypic differences in defined circulating CD4+ and CD8+ T cell subpopulations suggest remnants of an active immune response to tumor distinguished by a predominant memory T cell response and by untapped recruitment of naive helper and cytotoxic T cells. E75 vaccination induced recruitment of both CD4+ and CD8+ naive T cells while memory response remained stable. Additionally, vaccination induced global activation of all T cells, with specific enhancement of effector CD4+ T cells. E75 vaccination causes activation of both memory and naive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, while recruiting additional naive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells to the overall immune response.

PMID: 16783576 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]