New Plant-based Cancer Vaccine Developed To Fight Cancer, Study

Scientists have developed a plant-based cancer vaccine capable of kick-starting a body’s immune response with the hope to treat cancer, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The vaccine has already been tested and successfully cured cancer in mice. This is also the first time a plant-based cancer vaccine that is tested on humans with promising results. There have been a few trials of cancer vaccines tested on animal or human cells but found to have had mixed results.

A team of researchers led by Ronald Levy of the Stanford University Medical Center tested the vaccine on 16 patients who were recently diagnosed with follicular B-cell lymphoma, a chronic, incurable disease. More than 70 percent of the patients developed an immune response and none experienced any significant side effects.

“The idea is to marshall the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. We know that if you get the immune system revved up, it can attack and kill cancer,” Ronald Levy said. Finding the right target requires cloning the genes from the patient’s tumor, explained the lead author from his interview featured in the paper. Then those genes are injected into a virus, which naturally attacks tobacco plants. This virus is scratched onto the leaves of a tobacco plant and it becomes a “protein production factor,” Levy further explained. After a week, the leaves are ground up and then the protein is isolated and injected into the patient.

The plant-based vaccine has a number of advantages according to Levy. It can be developed much more quickly and at far less expense. It does not carry the risk of infection should the animal cells be contaminated. And the antibodies produced may also spark a stronger immune response than those developed in mammalian cells.