But here's where Barth and his colleagues tried something different. They took proteins from the patient's tumor and mixed them with a certain kind of cell grown from the patient's blood. The personalized vaccines were injected into each patient a month after surgery. Barth was able to determine that about 60% of the patients developed an immune response from the vaccine.
About five years later, he was able to compare the clinical outcomes between those who had had an immune response, and those who had not. Of the group who did not have an immune response from the vaccine, only 18% were alive and tumor-free. Of the group who did have an immune response from the vaccine, 63% were alive and tumor-free--a remarkable result indeed. (The vaccine approach has the added benefit of being non-toxic, in contrast to chemo.)
Fighting tumors with tumors
Fighting tumors with tumors
http://www.fastcompany.com/1705155/figh ... ith-tumors
It sounds like a good approach for those hard-to-remove cancers, according to the article. So the surgeon would get the big pieces out then follow up immediately with this treatment to tackle any small bits, which immunization would be strong enough to handle. Of course I'm sure it's more complicated than that...