HEALTH REPORTER ADELAIDE researchers are confident they can create the "holy grail" of cancer prevention with a multi-purpose vaccine.
The University of South Australia team is working on a vaccine that would prevent one in five cancers by eliminating infections that cause cancer.
Chronic infections such as human papillomavirus, hepatitis B and HIV can lead to a range of deadly cancers.
Team leader Dr John Hayball, senior immunology lecturer, is working on the project in conjunction with Associate Professor Michael Brown from the Royal Adelaide Hospital ’s Hanson Institute. He said while work was in the "pre-clinical and experimental" phase, the "ultimate aim" was not just to prevent cancer-causing infections, but to cure the existing ones.
"We ’re trying to make therapeutic vaccines, so instead of making vaccines that just protect you from getting an infection these vaccines will also do that but the idea is to actually kill the diseases that people carry," he said. "We ’re trying to develop a platform technology that can be used for any number of chronic viral infectious diseases, a lot of which are associated with causing cancer.
"If we can eliminate those infections, there ’s a real possibility of cutting the incidence of cancer by one fifth and obviously that ’s a huge leap forward." Continued Page 14
From Page 1 The vaccine would be given through an injection and would be carried by a safe, non-pathogenic virus. The most high-profile vaccine to be developed recently is Gardasil.
It works by protecting against the HPV infection, which causes 70 per cent of cervical cancers.
Gardasil ’s creator, Professor Ian Frazer, is now working on a vaccine for skin cancer.
But Dr Hayball said the team wanted to make a multi-purpose vaccine that would go to the next level. "(The Gardasil) vaccine, like all vaccines today, can only protect you from getting the virus once you ’ve got it it ’s too late," he said.
"But if you could develop a vaccine for this virus that would kill it in the carriers, it would dramatically reduce the incidence of cervical cancer in carriers." Dr Hayball said research would be conducted into making existing vaccine responses more durable. "What you really want from a vaccine is a one-shot cure, you don ’t want to be coming back for boosters your whole life." Cancer Council SA chief executive Associate Professor Brenda Wilson said the news was an exciting advance in the battle against cancer. "Every year, thousands of South Australians are diagnosed with cancer," she said.
"Cancer Council SA invest around $3 million into research every year and we applaud advances such as this vaccine with the promise of reducing the incidence of cancer and the associated burden on all South Australians." Health Minister John Hill also welcomed the researchers ’ announcement. "It ’s terrifically encouraging to see researchers in this state thinking big," he said. "We can all be proud of the outstanding work being done in SA to promote and support cancer research." Dr Hayball said creating the vaccine would be difficult but that he was optimistic.
"It ’s these polyfunctional immune responses that we ’re looking to trigger in the body to prevent, contain and kill any number of chronic infections and there ’s a real potential for success in this field," Dr Hayball said.
"We don ’t do research that is only ever going to cure mice of diseases in a lab, we work with technologies we know have a strong chance of being approved for use in humans." Cancer vaccine researcher Associate Professor Brendon Coventry, from the University of Adelaide, said scientists were just beginning to understand the importance of the immune system and vaccines in the prevention and treatment of cancer.
He described it as an exciting new field of research.
"We ’re really trying to learn as much as we can about how the immune system works and ways we can teach the immune system to better defend the body against a range of diseases not just infectious diseases but cancer as well, and possibly heart disease and diabetes," he said.
"The effect (of developing this sort of therapeutic vaccine) would be very wide ranging and would potentially protect a lot of people against a range of cancers." However, Professor Coventry also warned there was never room for complacency when it came to other methods of cancer prevention.
Tory Shepherd,
Adelaide Advertiser, Australia
Miracle cancer vaccine gets closer’
