Mexican Researchers Begin Clinical Trials For Cancer Recurrence Vaccine

Dr. Juan Pablo Márquez Manriquez and his team of researchers at the International Cancer Center in Sonora are beginning clinical trials of “a number of vaccines mixed together” which can prevent the recurrence of different types of cancers. Dr. Márquez says the new therapy works by "training the immune system to recognize and eliminate remaining cancerous cells" after a patient has undergone conventional treatment. This was initially tested on mice which had been programmed to develop at a certain time and didn’t.

“The animals that received the vaccine, both individual vaccines and the cocktail, never developed colon, pancreatic or ovarian cancer,” Dr. Márquez explained. In 2006, they tested the vaccine on 104 patients; 25 with breast cancer, 25 with ovarian cancer, 25 with multiple myeloma, 25 with colon cancer and the only four with pancreatic cancer at the time. “So far, only one of the participants has died and that was due to an unrelated cardiac problem in 2014,” he explained.

Thanks to these positive results, the researchers have been allowed to combine the first phases of the clinical trials and move faster by reaching thousands of patients. Tests will be conducted in Mexico City, Sonora, Ciudad Obregón and most likely Tijuana, in collaboration with the National Oncology Institute, which Márquez says is the top cancer institution in Mexico and Latin America.

Researchers estimate that if everything goes well, the treatment should be approved in Mexico and the U.S. by 2017, 2019 at the very latest. “We will have fewer recurrences, fewer hospitals full of patients with recurrent cancer,” the scientist said. “That is what matters, that there will be less pain,” he concluded.