hpv vaccine nhs adults :: Article CreatorNew Vaccine Could 'wipe Out' Ovarian Cancer
The world's first vaccine to treat ovarian cancer could eradicate the disease, experts have said.
Scientists at the University of Oxford are working on a vaccine named OvarianVax, which teaches your immune system to recognise and attack ovarian cancer in its earliest stages. Charity Cancer Research is funding the study with up to £600,000 over the next three years.
The aim is to give the jab preventatively to women on the NHS. Researchers have suggested that the vaccine could work in a similar way to the humanpapillomavirus (HPV) jab, which has significantly reduced rates of cervical cancer.
Scientists at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford are working out which cells to target. They will use the vaccine to teach the immune system to identify over 100 proteins on the surface of ovarian-cancer cells, called tumour-associated antigens. They will also see how effectively the vaccine kills miniature, lab-based models of ovarian cancer.
Related Stories
Next, they will perform human clinical trials in people with the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations – which significantly raise the risk of ovarian cancer – and in healthy women. Once these stages have been completed, experts can then decide whether the vaccine is safe for general administration.
According to Professor Ahmed Ahmed, director of the ovarian cancer cell laboratory at Oxford's Institute of Molecular Medicine, As for whether he thought the new treatment could completely erase ovarian cancer, he said: 'Absolutely – that would be the aim. We still have a long way to go but...I'm very optimistic.'
Women with BRCA mutations are advised to have their ovaries removed by the age of 35, preventing them from having children and subjecting them to an early menopause. The vaccine could save them from undergoing this procedure.
Ovarian cancer occurs in the ovaries when abnormal cells begin to grow and divide in an uncontrolled manner, eventually forming a tumour. There are around 7,500 new cases in the UK every year, with BRCA mutations accounting for around 5-15%.
andreswd//Getty Images
When will the vaccine be ready?
According to Professor Ahmed, it will still take 'many years' for the vaccine to become readily and widely available.
However, he added that some impact from the vaccine 'would hopefully be much sooner', even as early as 'four or five years on the healthy population'.
'I am optimistic because we are talking about preventing the very first few cancer cells that develop – and not trying to cure or treat or prevent the tumour coming back,' he added.
Cancer Research UK have described the work as an 'exciting step forward'.
Dr Claire Bromley, research information manager at Cancer Research UK, said to The Independent: 'A few decades ago, the idea of a cancer vaccine was science fiction. We're moving into an area where cancer as a disease could become much more preventable... It is far much more of a reality.'
Speaking to the BBC, Dr David Crosby, head of prevention and early detection research at Cancer Research UK, said, 'At this stage, scientists are testing the best components to include in the vaccine, by first trialling it in the lab with samples taken from ovarian cancer patients.'
Currently, the main treatments for ovarian cancer are surgery, chemotherapy, hormone treatments and targeted medicines. There is no screening test, and the disease is often only diagnosed in its later stages, due to ambiguous symptoms such as loss of appetite and bloating.
Read now: 5 things to consider before getting a bob haircut
Related stories
Cut through the noise and get practical, expert advice, home workouts, easy nutrition and more direct to your inbox. Sign up to the WOMEN'S HEALTH NEWSLETTER
Related Stories
Adult Vaccines Resource Center
Top Vaccine-Preventable Disease: Measles, Flu, and More
Get the WebMD list of the top vaccine-preventable diseases, including COVID-19, measles, whooping cough, flu, polio, pneumococcal disease, meningococcal disease, mumps, Hib, tetanus, and hepatitis B.
Understanding The HPV Vaccine
If you knew you were at increased risk of developing a particular form of cancer, and there was a vaccine that could help prevent it, wouldn't you want to receive it?
Yet for people with lupus, in some cases, vaccines can trigger a lupus flare. Or perhaps the vaccine may not be effective for those with a compromised immune system. A drug manufacturer would have to take additional time and expense to study the safety and effectiveness of vaccines specifically for people with complex immune system diseases, such as lupus.
Sometimes it takes a person with a passion to accept this kind of challenge. Rheumatologist Patricia Dhar, MD, at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, is that kind of person.
Guarding against HPV
The human papillomavirus, or HPV, can cause cervical, vulvar, vaginal, and anal cancers; precancerous lesions; and genital warts. There are many cancer-causing types of HPV; types 16 and 18 cause 70 percent of cases of cervical cancer, while types 6 and 11 cause 90 percent of cases of genital warts. The Gardasil® vaccine—called a "quadrivalent vaccine" because it protects against four HPV types (6, 11, 16, and 18)—was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006 for girls and young women ages 9 to 26 and boys and young men ages 9 to 26.
Dhar and her colleagues have published data showing that women with lupus are at increased risk for both cervical dysplasia and cervical cancer. They believe this is due to persistent infection with HPV. "By age 50, 80 percent of women have been exposed to HPV," Dhar says.
"If you receive the vaccine before being infected, when HPV 'comes into the house,' you already have an army [to fight it]," Dhar says. "But HPV is difficult to get rid of completely because some virus particles remain in the basal layer of the tissue, so there is always a reservoir of the virus in the body."
The virus has the ability to hide in the cervical tissue cells, where it quietly reproduces, she explains. The longer the virus persists in cervical tissue, the greater its ability to cause transformation of the cells to cervical cancer. Gardasil boosts production of the antibodies that attach, or bind, to HPV so that the immune system can get rid of the virus.
More research is needed into the relationship between certain vaccinations and lupus flares
Without data on how the vaccine works in lupus, Dhar knew physicians couldn't be sure whether to recommend Gardasil to their patients. She decided to submit her own "investigator-initiated" study to Gardasil's manufacturer, pharmaceutical giant Merck. It was reviewed and approved; Merck also agreed to provide the vaccine for the participants.
Dhar worked directly with the scientist responsible for worldwide clinical development of Gardasil, Alfred Saah, MD, who is an internal medicine physician with a background in infectious diseases.
"It is deemed to be safe for people with lupus to be vaccinated, and it is recommended that they receive the normal types of vaccines that exist," Saah says. "But there is always a concern that a vaccine will cause a flare.
So the first question Dr. Dhar is investigating is, 'Do certain things in lupus flare when the person uses Gardasil?' The second issue, beyond safety, is, 'How do people with lupus respond to this vaccine?' "
Saah stresses that the vaccine does not take the place of routine Pap testing, and both he and Dhar strongly recommend that women continue to have regular Pap tests.
"The Pap test protects against any type of 'breakthrough' from an inadequate response to the vaccine," Saah says, "and also [allows] women to protect themselves against the types of HPV that are not in the vaccine."
Comments
Post a Comment