In search of a sarcoma vaccine
By Rober Levy
Remove a portion of a patient's tumor, equip the cancerous cells with a gene that raises a red flag to the immune system, re-inject the cells into the patient, and hope the immune system mounts a charge against tumors throughout the body. It's a vaccine technique—developed by Dana-Farber's Glenn Dranoff, MD—that has shown promise against melanoma, the most threatening form of skin cancer. Now it is being customized and tested against two types of sarcoma.
Soft tissue sarcoma as seen through an electronic microscope
Dana-Farber's John Goldberg, MD, and Stephen Hodi, MD, in association with the Sarcoma Center linking the Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Children's Hospital Boston, are leading a clinical trial of this vaccine type, known as GVAX, in patients with clear-cell sarcoma or alveolar soft part sarcoma. These tumors are fatal if not able to be completely removed by surgery. "They can take years, sometimes decades, to claim people's lives, but they eventually do, often after patients have had dozens of surgeries," says Goldberg, a member of the lab team of Dana-Farber's David E. Fisher, MD, PhD.
The new clinical study was inspired by Fisher's discovery that these forms of sarcoma are controlled by a family of genes also active in melanoma. States Goldberg: "The similarities suggest that the vaccine—which has been associated with promisingly long survival in certain patients with malignant melanoma—may also be effective for people with these two types of sarcoma."
