New ‘ground-breaking’ bowel cancer vaccine to go on trial at hospital

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Health specialists have hailed a doubtlessly “ground-breaking” vaccine to deal with early bowel cancer set to go on trial in England and Australia.

The remedy will trialled at the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust and Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide.

Doctors plan to administer the vaccine to sufferers earlier than surgical procedure, within the hope that it’s going to trigger the physique to assault the cancer.

It would make any surgical procedure much less invasive and medics hope that the power of the vaccine might assist the immune system to reply if there’s a relapse and the cancer returns later on.

Dr Tony Dhillon, chief investigator of the trial and Surrey’s marketing consultant medical oncologist, proposed the thought for the trial and has labored with Professor Tim Price in Australia for the final 4 years to develop the vaccine.

He stated: “This is the first treatment vaccine in any gastrointestinal cancer and we have high hopes that it will be very successful. We think that for a lot of patients, the cancer will have gone completely after this treatment.”

The trial might be run by the Cancer Research UK Southampton Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Southampton in collaboration with Surrey and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

There might be 10 websites for sufferers to be enrolled – six in Australia and 4 within the UK, with 44 sufferers to be enrolled within the examine over an 18 month interval.

Patients can have an endoscopy, then a tissue pattern might be examined to see if they’re eligible for the trial. If they’re, they may have three doses of the vaccine earlier than having surgical procedure to take away the cancer.

The trial might be accessible for simply 44 sufferers all over the world.  After the trial finishes, the vaccine will both be licensed to be used, or if it’s profitable, a much bigger examine might be carried out.

The vaccine has been designed by Imugene Ltd, a scientific stage immuno-oncology firm.

Dr Dhillon added: “This is ground-breaking. I feel as if we are on the edge of something really big here. The vaccine makes the immune system go after the cancer.

“It will be life changing because it means that potentially, patients may not need to have surgery – they may just have the vaccine.

“The work we have done here at Royal Surrey is fantastic. We are hugely proud to have been involved in this worldwide trial and believe it could be key to treating bowel cancer in the future.”

Louise Stead, Surrey’s chief government, stated: “We are hugely proud to have been involved in the launch of this ground-breaking new vaccine.

“As the fourth largest cancer centre in the UK, helping to fight cancer is a huge part of what we do and this will really provide an opportunity for bowel cancer patients and give them real hope of beating the disease.

“I would like to say a huge well done to Dr Tony Dhillon and everyone associated with this trial for all their hard work.”

Bowel cancer, also referred to as colorectal cancer, is the third commonest cancer, with a worldwide annual incidence of over 1.2 million circumstances and a mortality fee of roughly 50 per cent.