Novel Combination Techniques to Overcome Cost-Effective Challenge in Breast Cancer Treatment

Release Date: 05-Nov-2020

There are number of cancer therapies available for the patients in the market but most of the therapies that are available are associated with drawbacks. Chemotherapeutic drugs available for the cancer patients are prone to kill the healthy cells. On the other hand, immunotherapy drugs available for the cancer patients by attacking immune cells avoid such problems developed by the other chemotherapeutic agents. Therefore, researchers are focused towards killing the cancer cells by combining chemotherapy as well as immunotherapy into a cancer vaccine. The same combination of cancer vaccine when injected in the mouse model suffering from aggressive triple-negative breast cancer led to 100% survival of the model organisms.

In 2009, the very first injectable cancer vaccine was developed by the researchers and the complete exploration of the vaccine in case of mice has developed immense hopes. In the cancer vaccine development, the researchers have combined tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) with adjuvants. The TAA used in the cancer vaccine was harvested from the tumors. But the researchers involved in the respective study also came across different limitations which in future were achieved by combining chemotherapy drugs so that it could burst the cancer cells and thus releases TAA directly from the site of the tumor.

The group of researchers involved in the respective study loaded alginate hydrogel scaffold with a protein molecule called Granulocyte-Macrophage Colony Stimulating Factor (GM-CSF), chemotherapy drug doxorubicin (Dox) attached to a peptide called iRGD. The overall procedure led to more penetration of the drug at the site of tumor, thus increasing the death of the cancer cells. Researchers are now trying to explore the applications that are associated with combining chemotherapy with cancer vaccines and it is believed that the future outcomes of such studies will completely transform the cancer therapeutics market.