I love eating at Chipotle. One of the reasons I like this restaurant so much is that you can personalize your meal so you don’t have to have certain ingredients (I’m looking at you sour cream) in your food if you don’t want them there. You can build a rice bowl exactly how you want it. *I’m not a sponsor, but if you’re reading this, Chipotle, please contact me.* What if we could personalize medicine in the same way we personalize our Chipotle orders? It now seems as if this is possible through dendritic cell therapy.
Dendritic cell therapy is a relatively new form of therapy that is used to treat cancer. According to one article, DC therapy consists in vaccines that work to improve the body’s immune system by “presenting and activating specific antigens at the tumor site.” By so doing, DC vaccines activate T cells to start an immune response while also avoiding the uncomfortable side effects of traditional cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy. Because of this, there has been a lot of research put into this form of therapy recently, meaning that there are many different version of DC vaccines available or currently being tested. One such vaccine being researched is a DC nano-vaccine that is meant to target Ovarian cancer, the most lethal type of reproductive cancer in women (according to the CDC). This vaccine is dubbed a “mini vaccine,” and has been shown by a recent study to be more effective than traditional DC vaccines. Another recent study proposed that a preliminary injection of OC-DC (DC vaccine containing autologous oxidized tumor lysate) would helpe ‘prime’ T cells to better receive another DC vaccine called PEP-DC when treating ovarian cancer.
Over all, DC vaccines seem pretty great. Unfortunately, unlike Chipotle, they are not affordable. In fact, Provenge (the first DC vaccine to be approved) costs $93,000 for the three infusions (according to FierceBiotech). I don’t have that kind of money, and neither do most other people. It seems (like most things in life) that this form of treatment would be much improved by making it cheaper.
Microbes and Musings 