vaccines – Page 2 – Oral Cancer News

Vaccine, anti-PD1 drug show promise against incurable HPV-related cancers

A tumor-specific vaccine combined with an immune checkpoint inhibitor shrank tumors in one third of patients with incurable cancer related to the human papilloma virus (HPV) in a phase II clinical trial led by investigators at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and reported in JAMA Oncology. "That encouraging response rate is about twice the rate produced by PD1 checkpoint inhibitors in previous clinical trials, so these results will lead to larger, randomized clinical trials of this combination," said principal investigator Bonnie Glisson, M.D., professor of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology and Abell-Hanger Foundation Distinguished Professor at MD Anderson. Vaccines specific to HPV antigens found on tumors had previously sparked a strong immune response, but had not, by themselves, been active against established cancers, Glisson said. "Vaccines are revving up the immune system, but the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment probably prevents them from working," Glisson said. "Our thinking was that inhibition of PD-1 would address one mechanism of immunosuppression, empowering the vaccine-activated T lymphocytes to attack the cancer." The team combined the vaccine ISA101, which targets important peptides produced by the strongly cancer-promoting HPV16 genotype of the virus, along with nivolumab, a checkpoint inhibitor that blocks activation of PD-1 on T cells. Of the 24 patients with recurrent HPV16-related cancers, 22 had oropharyngeal (back of the throat) cancer, one had cervical cancer and one had anal cancer. Eight (33 percent) had a tumor response, two were complete. All eight had oropharyngeal cancer. Median duration of response was 10.3 months. [...]

Charlotte Parker2018-09-28T10:06:38-07:00September, 2018|Oral Cancer News|

New Book: Vaccines Have Always Had Haters

Date: 09/23/18 Source: National Public Radio Author: Susan Brink Vaccinations have saved millions, maybe billions, of lives, says Michael Kinch, associate vice chancellor and director of the Center for Research Innovation in Business at Washington University in St. Louis. Those routine shots every child is expected to get can fill parents with hope that they're protecting their children from serious diseases. But vaccines also inspire fear that something could go terribly wrong. That's why Kinch's new book is aptly named: Between Hope and Fear: A History of Vaccines and Human Immunity. He wrote it, he says, to present the science behind vaccines and to highlight the fallacy of anti-vaccine movements. NPR talked with Kinch about vaccines. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. The first attempts to control smallpox go back at least 1,000 years and didn't involve vaccines. Can you describe those attempts? Smallpox was probably killing a half a million people a year in Europe alone. The medical community had adopted a practice called nasal insufflation. You could take a little bit of the material from a smallpox scab, turn it into a powder and have a child snort it into the nose. Or you could intentionally scrape the skin and put material from a smallpox pustule under the skin of a healthy individual. That was called variolation. Those procedures caused smallpox, and people got sick. But far fewer of them died because most people would get a less virulent form of disease than if they [...]

Charlotte Parker2018-09-24T09:59:48-07:00September, 2018|Oral Cancer News|

Scientists map interactions between head and neck cancer and HPV virus

Source: medicalxpress.com Author: staff, Gladstone Institutes Human papillomavirus (HPV) is widely known to cause nearly all cases of cervical cancer. However, you might not know that HPV also causes 70 percent of oropharyngeal cancer, a subset of head and neck cancers that affect the mouth, tongue, and tonsils. Although vaccines that protect against HPV infection are now available, they are not yet widespread, especially in men, nor do they address the large number of currently infected cancer patients. Patients with head and neck cancer caused by HPV respond very differently to treatments than those whose cancer is associated with the consumption of tobacco products. The first group generally has better outcomes, with almost 80 percent of patients surviving longer than 5 years after diagnosis, compared to only 45-50 percent for patients with tobacco-related cancers. To better understand what might cause these differences, a team of scientists led by Nevan J. Krogan, Ph.D., senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes, is taking a unique approach by focusing on the cancer-causing virus. They recently mapped the interactions between all HPV proteins and human proteins for the first time. Their findings are published today in the journal Cancer Discovery. "With our study, we identified several new protein interactions that were previously not known to cause cancer, expanding our knowledge of the oncogenic roles of the HPV virus" said Krogan, who is also a professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology at UC San Francisco (UCSF) and the director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) at [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2018-09-13T08:58:41-07:00September, 2018|Oral Cancer News|

Young men should be required to get the HPV vaccine. It would have saved me from cancer.

Source: www.thedailybeast.com Author: Michael Becker In December 2015, at the age of 47, I was diagnosed with Stage IV oral squamous cell carcinoma. More simply, I have advanced cancer of the head and neck. While initial treatment with grueling chemo-radiation appeared successful, the cancer returned one year later in both of my lungs. My prognosis shifted from potentially curable to terminal disease. The news was shocking and devastating—not just for me, but for my wife, two teenage daughters, and the rest of our family and friends. Suddenly, my life revolved around regular appointments for chemotherapy, radiation therapy, imaging procedures, and frequent checkups. I made seemingly endless, unscheduled hospital emergency room visits—including one trip to the intensive care unit—to address some of the more severe toxicities from treatment. All told, I suffered from more than a dozen side effects related to treatment and/or cancer progression. Some are temporary; others permanent. These include anxiety, depression, distorted sense of taste, clots forming in my blood vessels, dry mouth, weight loss, and many more. My cancer started with a human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, a virus that is preventable with vaccines available for adolescent girls since 2006 and boys starting in 2011. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved three vaccines to prevent HPV infection: Gardasil®, Gardasil® 9, and Cervarix®. These vaccines provide strong protection against new HPV infections for young women through age 26, and young men through age 21, but they are not effective at treating established HPV infections. It was too [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2017-12-01T12:06:13-07:00December, 2017|Oral Cancer News|

B.C. to begin providing free HPV vaccines for Grade 6 boys

Source: ctvnews.ca Author: Darcy Matheson Date: September 26, 2017 For the first time in British Columbia, boys in Grade 6 will be receiving free vaccinations for the Human Papillomavirus. HPV is one of the most commonly sexually transmitted infections and B.C. health authorities say three out of four sexually active people will get it at some point in their lives. Often showing no physical symptoms, HPV can lead to cervical, vaginal, and vulvar cancers in women and penile cancer in men – and can also cause anal and throat cancer in both men and women. Up until now, the vaccine to protect against HPV was only provided free to girls in Grade 6, with the assumption that boys would be indirectly protected through “herd immunity.” Vancouver Coastal Health will soon be sending out letters to parents and caregivers through children's schools regarding upcoming clinics for both girls and boys. People can also be immunized through health-care providers, family doctors and local public health units. Dr. Meena Dawar, medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, said that immunizations are key because the symptom-less virus is often passed onto others without knowing it. “Most often an HPV infection will clear on its own but sometimes HPV won’t go away and cells infected with the virus can become cancerous," Dawar said in a statement. Cancer survivor Sandy Yun had her 14-year-old daughter immunized as part of the B.C. program. She was going to pay for her 11-year-old son to get the vaccine but now she [...]

Charlotte Parker2017-10-29T20:12:48-07:00September, 2017|Oral Cancer News|

What’s next after creating a cancer-prevention vaccine?

Source: www.scientificamerican.com Author: Dina Fine Maron A winner of this year’s Lasker Awards talks about his work with HPV Imagine a vaccine that protects against more than a half-dozen types of cancer—and has a decade of data and experience behind it. We have one. It’s the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, and it was approved for the U.S. market back in June 2006. It can prevent almost all cervical cancers and protect against cancers of the mouth, throat and anus. It also combats the sexually transmitted genital warts that some forms of the virus can cause. On Wednesday, two researchers who completed fundamental work on these vaccines received one of this year’s prestigious Lasker Awards, a group of medical prizes sometimes called the “American Nobels.” Douglas Lowy and John Schiller, whose research provided the basis for the HPV vaccine, were selected alongside a researcher who separately unraveled key aspects of metabolic control of cell growth. Planned Parenthood was also given an award, for its public service. Lowy and Schiller, who both work at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), received the Lasker for their research on animal and human papillomaviruses—work that enabled the development of a vaccine against HPV-16 type, a form of the virus that fuels many HPV malignancies. The duo’s experiments proved that the vaccine is effective in animals, and they also conducted the first clinical trial of an HPV-16 vaccine in humans. That gave pharmaceutical companies the evidence they needed to invest in their own vaccines designed to [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2017-09-06T08:08:49-07:00September, 2017|Oral Cancer News|

NIH-funded study finds new potential drug targets by uncovering a range of molecular alterations in head and neck cancers

Source: www.nih.govAuthor: Staff Investigators with The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network have discovered genomic differences — with potentially important clinical implications — in head and neck cancers caused by infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is the most common sexually transmitted virus in the United States, and the number of HPV-related head and neck cancers has been growing. Almost every sexually active person will acquire HPV at some point in their lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers also uncovered new smoking-related cancer subtypes and potential new drug targets, and found numerous genomic similarities with other cancer types. Taken together, this study’s findings may provide more detailed explanations of how HPV infection and smoking play roles in head and neck cancer risk and disease development, and offer potential novel diagnostic and treatment directions. The study is the most comprehensive examination to date of genomic alterations in head and neck cancers. The results were published online Jan. 28, 2015 in the journal Nature. TCGA is jointly supported and managed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), both parts of the National Institutes of Health. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved HPV vaccines should be able to prevent the cancers caused by HPV infection in head and neck cancers and elsewhere, including anal cancer, whose incidence has also been increasing. However, these vaccines work by preventing new infections, and the long interval between infection and cancer development make it [...]

Charlotte Parker2015-03-10T10:11:49-07:00March, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

Number of immune cells in tumors could soon help predict and treat cancers

Source: www.science20.com Authors: Emma King, University of Southampton and Christian Ottensmeier, University of Southampton Immune cells in the blood primarily defend us against infection. But we’re now learning that these cells can also keep us free from cancer. Patients with less efficient immune systems such as organ transplant recipients or those with untreated HIV, for example, are more susceptible to cancers. It is also becoming increasingly apparent that we can use immune cells to predict survival in people who do develop cancer. And that, in fact, there are immune cells within cancers. Head and neck cancer underway The number of immune cells inside a tumor can hugely vary: some patients have vast numbers while some have very few. In a recent study, we showed that in head and neck cancers, the survival of a patient depends on how many immune cells are within the tumor. This could be a valuable way of individualizing cancer treatments. Patients with lots of immune cells, for example, could be offered less toxic cancer treatment while those with few immune cells may need more aggressive treatment to improve their chances of survival. Not all immune cells within the tumor are able to “attack” the cancer. By looking at specific cell markers – proteins on the cell exterior that allow us to see whether, for example, cells are exhausted – we can determine which individual immune cells in the tumor will be effective in tackling the cancer, or if they are exhausted and not [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-09-26T06:21:57-07:00September, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

High-Risk HPV Prevalent in Oropharyngeal Cancers

Author: Roxanne NelsonSource: medscape.com A larger percentage of oropharyngeal cancers might be related to human papillomavirus (HPV) than previously thought. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that in a large sample of invasive oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas, 72% were positive for HPV and 62% were positive for high-risk HPV types 16 and 18, which are covered by the 2 commercially available vaccines (Gardasil, Merck & Co.;Cervarix, GlaxoSmithKline). On the basis of these data, the CDC researchers suggest that vaccines could prevent most oropharyngeal cancers in the United States. The vaccines are marketed mainly for the prevention of cervical cancer, but there is hope, and some evidence, that the vaccines might also protect against oropharyngeal cancer. For example, last year, the Costa Rica HPV Vaccine Trial found that the Cervarix vaccine reduced oral HPV infections in women by more than 90%. However, the effect of the vaccines could vary by demographic factors; HPV prevalence differed by sex and race/ethnicity, the researchers note. In their study, Martin Steinau, PhD, senior scientist at the CDC, and colleagues report that the current global incidence of oropharyngeal cancers is estimated to be 85,000 annually, although there is considerable geographic variation. In the United States, there are about 12,000 new cases diagnosed every year, and most are classified histologically as squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC). The retrospective analysis was published in the May issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases. Study Details Dr. Steinau and colleagues sought to determine prevalence of HPV types detected in oropharyngeal cancers in the American population, and to [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-05-02T14:43:57-07:00May, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Four Ways Katie Couric Stacked The Deck Against Gardasil

Source: ForbesPublished: Wednesday, December 4, 2013 This afternoon, Katie Couric ran a long segment on her daytime talk show, Katie, about what she called the “controversy” over the vaccines against human papilloma virus, or HPV, an infection that causes cervical, throat, penile, and anal cancers. She featured one mother who says that Gardasil, the HPV vaccine made by Merck , killed her daughter, and a young woman, seated with her mother, who said that Gardasil had caused years of illness that made her think she might die. (GlaxoSmithKline GSK +0.15% makes another HPV vaccine, Cervarix, that is less commonly used in the U.S.) Alongside those stories, Couric also featured two medical experts: Dr. Diane Harper, the chair of family and geriatric medicine at the University of Louisville, who helped test Gardasil but has since argued that the vaccine has been over-marketed and its benefits oversold; and Mallika Marshall, a Harvard Medical School doctor who is Couric’s in-house medical correspondent. Marshall defended the vaccine; strangely, only her arguments appear on the show’s Web site. Despite the attempt at balance, I think most viewers will be left with the impression that the vaccine is dangerous and that its benefits don’t outweigh its risks – a conclusion that is not shared by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Here’s how Couric stacked the deck against the HPV vaccine: 1. By downplaying the effectiveness of [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-12-05T13:18:37-07:00December, 2013|Oral Cancer News|