Moffitt breast cancer trial tests immunotherapy to replace chemotherapy
Moffitt studies cell therapy to treat breast cancer
Doctors in Tampa are pioneering a new way to treat breast cancer without chemotherapy. Moffitt Cancer Center is launching a clinical trial that could eventually replace toxic treatments with a custom vaccine. FOX 13's Kylie Jones reports.
TAMPA, Fla. - Doctors in Tampa are experimenting with a way to treat breast cancer without chemotherapy.
Moffitt cancer trial
What we know:
Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa is running a clinical trial that tests immunotherapy to treat breast cancer without chemotherapy. The treatment uses a custom dendritic cell vaccine made directly from a patient's own blood.
The clinical trial targets patients diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer, which is one of the three most common types of breast cancer. Dr. Heath Han, a medical oncologist at Moffitt, says HER2-positive is one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer, and is difficult to treat.
"We will take blood from patients' patients' blood, and manufacture a specific dendritic cell vaccine in the cell therapy vaccine lab at the Moffitt Cancer Center," Han said. "And these dendritic cell vaccines are designed to make tumor microenvironment better, to increase immune infiltration. So potentially, they can attack the cancer cells and also help the treatment work better."
Han says patients must have stage one or stage two HER2-positive breast cancer and a tumor measuring less than three centimeters, to be eligible for the trial.
Han says the trial is still accepting patients. You can get pre-screened by calling 813-861-2753 or 1-855-370-0152. You can also find more information about the trial here.
Immunotherapy breast cancer treatment
What they're saying:
Dr. Heather Han, a medical oncologist at Moffitt Cancer Center, explained that the custom vaccine is injected directly into the breast tumor.
"We are hoping that this treatment could potentially lead to a higher cure rate without the patient experiencing recurrences following this treatment," Han said. "We already have preliminary data that we're working on with the patients and lab that this vaccine, when we give it to patient's tumor injection, not only making the tumor get smaller and go away from the injection to that breast tumor itself, there is also data that this immunotherapy, the vaccine therapy, can potentially clear metastasis initiating cells."
Breast cancer care advance
The backstory:
Chemotherapy is a common treatment for cancer patients, but its toxic side effects often take a heavy physical toll on the body. Over the last several years, doctors at Moffitt Cancer Center experimented by combining the dendritic cell vaccine immunotherapy with de-escalated chemotherapy, or less intense chemotherapy.
After seeing significant success with that combined approach, researchers designed the current trial to evaluate using immunotherapy alone. Han says preliminary data indicates that some patients receiving the immunotherapy have not required surgery.
Breast cancer study access
What we don't know:
Officials have not stated how many total patients will be enrolled in the clinical trial. Researchers have also not released a specific timeline for when full trial results will be published.
The Source: The information in this story was gathered from an interview conducted with Moffitt Cancer Center Medical Oncologist Dr. Heather Han.