Mice with human body’s defenses

Therapeutic antibodies can be an efficient alternative when common drugs do not work anymore. However, antibodies obtained from blood of animals such as mice could not be used: The human immune system recognizes them as foreign and rejects them. In…

Antibody therapy can increase the effectiveness of cancer vaccine

The benefit of some cancer vaccines may be boosted by treating patients with an antibody that blocks a key protein on immune system T cells, according to a small, preliminary study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The study tested the effect of a single injection of the antibody MDX-CTLA4 in nine patients who had previously been treated with cancer vaccines for either metastatic melanoma or metastatic ovarian cancer. The result, in every patient who had received a particular kind of vaccine, was widespread death of cancer cells and an increase in the number of immune system cells within the tumors ? evidence of a potent immune system attack.