Will There Be A Vaccine Against Brain Tumors Soon?

Brain tumors are among the most aggressive forms of cancer. However, a vaccine that has already been developed could mean the end of this disease. Will there be a brain tumor vaccine soon?

Vaccines are helpful tools to prevent and cure disease. It is therefore understandable why researchers are looking for different ways to put an end to such aggressive cancers as brain tumors. But what if a brain tumor vaccine already exists?

The diagnosis of a brain tumor is a heavy blow not only to the patient but also to their families. The depression diagnosed patients sometimes fall into causes anxiety and great discomfort. This emerges from the article Quality of life in patients with gliomas: The role of psychological variables states .

But maybe there will be light at the end of the tunnel soon. This is because of several sources telling us that a vaccine could be the definitive solution for brain tumors . Find out below what expectations come with this news and how this vaccine is supposed to eradicate the disease.

Vaccine against brain tumors

The El País newspaper published an article in December 2018 about a personalized vaccine for patients with brain cancer. It was developed in a study with a small number of participants, which produced quite encouraging results.

However, since the number of participants was quite small, the researchers do not dare to confirm that they have found the cure for this type of cancer. Therefore, they need to conduct further studies to ensure the veracity of the evidence.

Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy is a highly relevant concept for this vaccine that the experts only recently discovered. This term refers to the use of the body’s defenses to attack the brain tumor directly.

However, the researchers found that not all tumors are exactly the same and that not all of them respond well to immunotherapy. For this reason, “Precision Immunotherapy” was developed to treat patients suffering from glioblastoma.

Personalized vaccine

Glioblastoma is one of the cancers with the worst prognosis. Therefore, the patients suffering from it at the time of the study needed a personalized vaccine to get positive results. But how do the experts do it?

The best way is to design a vaccine with the antigens from the patient’s own tumor. This favors a much more effective immune response. The lymphocytes manage to recognize “bad” cells and destroy them.

Upon examination, they found that patients responded positively to the personalized vaccine but not to the generic one. So a generic vaccine won’t work for every type of tumor. Therefore, in order to end brain tumors, the vaccine needs to be personalized.

Vaccine against brain tumors: what is the prognosis?

The advances that experts are making in various cancers, and especially brain tumors, are extremely encouraging. However, only 30 people took part in the study we mentioned in this article.

Perhaps this raises the question of whether it would be feasible to develop a personalized vaccine for every person with brain cancer. But is this feasible? And would people be able to afford it?

In addition, it is important to mention that research failed to destroy the cancer . However, it is important to emphasize that, despite the treatments received, the patients suffered from a rather aggressive cancer with a high mortality rate.

What was achieved , however , was increasing their life expectancy. As reported by El País newspaper , these patients typically live 14 months. However, the vaccine increased that number to 29 months. Undoubtedly, this is encouraging news, indicating that the experts are on the right track and that the ultimate cure may be at hand.

Currently, researchers continue to investigate various ways to end these diseases that kill thousands of people each year. We hope that sooner than later we will hear about a vaccine that will completely eradicate cancer.

Children, adults and the elderly suffer from different types of cancer. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy is an experience that we hope will soon be replaced by an accessible, reliable, and effective vaccine solution.

Do you think there will be a cure for cancer at some point? And do you think this will also be the case for more aggressive cancers like glioblastoma?