Tetanus Shot Helped Boost Brain Cancer Survival, SmallStudy Finds

One patient with glioblastoma still alive nine years later

WebMD News from HealthDay

By Maureen Salamon

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, March 12, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Adding a simple tetanus shot to another vaccinetreatment for a highly lethal form of brain cancer dramatically extended some patients' survival in asmall new study.

Researchers from Duke Cancer Institute found that three of six patients with glioblastoma -- a braintumor with a very poor prognosis -- lived years longer than expected after receiving a tetanus shot toenhance an immunotherapy targeting a virus in the tumor. One patient is still alive nearly nine yearsafter the treatment.

Prior research had found that glioblastoma tumors harbor a strain of cytomegalovirus not present insurrounding brain tissue. This creates a natural target for immunotherapy -- therapy that harnessesthe power of a patient's own immune system to help destroy cancer cells, researchers say.

"Because the [average] survival is 12 to 15 months in patients who receive a diagnosis of this tumor,we were quite surprised by the results of three patients who had much longer survival times," saidstudy author Kristen Batich, a dual medical-doctoral degree student at Duke University.

Glioblastoma is what killed Sen. Edward Kennedy in 2009.

The new study was published online March 11 in the journal Nature.

About 15 percent of the 23,000 brain tumors diagnosed each year in the United States areglioblastomas, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Initial symptoms of these malignanttumors include persistent headaches, double or blurred vision, vomiting or seizures.

Batich and her colleagues split 12 glioblastoma patients into two groups: six received a tetanusbooster and six received a placebo (dummy) shot. The following day, all 12 patients underwent atreatment known as dendritic cell immunotherapy.

This treatment uses dendritic cells, which "train" the immune system to respond to a specificinfectious agent. In this case, the Duke team extracted patients' white blood cells, coaxed the growthof dendritic cells and loaded them with an antigen (toxin) targeting the cytomegalovirus inglioblastoma tumors.

The dendritic cell vaccine was then injected back into the cancer patients. The purpose was to signallymph nodes to search and attack the cytomegalovirus-laden tumor.

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