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Comment by femto | Hacker News Reader

Richard Scolyer, first patient for a Glioblastoma vaccine, is 10 months in and counting. (I'm not sure if it's mRNA based.) The treatment was vaccine, followed by surgery to remove the tumour, followed by more vaccine to prevent recurrence. The vaccine course is up to 8 out of 10 planned doses. So far it hasn't come back.

https://www.facebook.com/ProfRScolyer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Scolyer#Cancer_diagnos...

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My father went under surgery to get this removed. It was 6cm and completely grew back within 3 months. He died 7 months later.

I'm sorry for your loss

Is this the same as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM)? I'm not a doctor, but I thought GBM was a death sentence? Progress on that front would be amazing.

Yes, it’s that cancer. Median survival is a little over a year iirc.

Often treatment focus is on quality of life issues, because they are often found due to physical deficits.

ThTs pretty good because glioblastomas are real real bad

A friend of mine 23 years died of glioblastoma. Completely undetected, he went to bed with a mild headache and died during his sleep.

If we find a cure for glioblastoma the challenge would be detection before it's too late.

And they tell me my health anxiety is "irrational".

To be honest that's not a bad way to go out. Better than years and years of treatment for something and a slow death. But yeah, the detection aspect would be interesting assuming these mRna viruses could cure cancer.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agreed.

This stance came shortly after I just buried my mother-in-law. Had been doing home-based hospice care for 3 (now deceased) parents of mine. Took 19-years solidly out of my life.

So, yes. Quicker the better, at least for me.

Super traumatic for his girlfriend though...

How can it be a vaccine if he already had Glioblastoma? Surely it's a treatment not a vaccine?

Not all vaccines are (purely) prophylactic. This is what we would call a therapeutic vaccine.

> A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease.

With viruses and bacteria the immune system eventually catches up and vaccinating tends to be done before the host is infected (rabies vaccination is an outlier since it still works even after infection during the latent period). With cancer the immune system usually doesn’t recognize the threat which is why vaccinating after the fact is still effective.

Yep, the goal of these vaccines are to program the body to have a strong immune reaction to the cancer/tumor.

The definition is broader than that. Think of a vaccine as something which teaches your immune system to fight some particular thing.

The most common application is as a preventative measure to protect you from an infectious disease. But it can be used for other diseases (like cancer, which is not infectious) and it can be used after you're sick.

Fun fact: if an unvaccinated person is exposed to measles, they can get the MMR within 72 hours of exposure, and it will still reduce the severity of the disease. (Source: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html )

Because the definition of vaccine has been muddled with what used to be called gene therapy. In this case, they are tricking the body's immune system to attack specific cancer cells like it would learn to attack a flu virus or any other antigen.

they couple it with surgery despite how the vaccines are supposed to remove the tumors themselves?

it seems odd but i guess its meant to aid the process?

I guess a die-off of so many cancer cells as is in tumor, would cause a lot of stress to the body. So they cut as much as they can and only leave small groups of cells to be targeted with other methods.

With tumors the mass matters. Each remaining cancer cell gives it another chance to stumble on a mutation that can allow it to escape your treatment.

BTW, that's also why so many tumor drugs work well in mice.

So now we only need to detect the cancer in an earlier stage, and surgery might not even be necessary (?)

Even if the immune system completely destroys the tumor, I'd be worried about tumor detritus (is that the right word?) floating around in the brain? It might be better than the alternative, but I'd think that's one spot you really don't want cobwebs gathering in.

If the immune system actually works properly, no, not really a huge concern. Leukocytes and macrophages fully consume foreign matter, enclosing it in a phagosome. This then merges with a lysosome, where the matter is broken down into harmless components, although some stays on the surface of the cell to activate other immune cells against that particular brand of gunk.

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