Cancer vaccine could ‘boost’ immunotherapy effectiveness

A new major study has revealed that supercharging the mutation rate in cancer cells could create a “powerful vaccine” that is able to boost the effectiveness of immunotherapy. The international study – carried out by scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, US, and the University of Leeds – forced cancer cells in the lab to evolve much more rapidly than usual using a molecule called APOBEC3B, which is often used by tumours to drive rapid genetic change and drug resistance. It found that the highly mutated cancer cells could be used to create a vaccine for each individual cancer type, which amplified the effects of immunotherapy – and cured mice with a variety of otherwise treatment-resistant tumours. The findings, which were published in Nature Communications journal, are the first to show that APOBEC3B’s role in driving cancer evolution can be used to create vaccines that can...