Is there precedence for this treatment method? I could imagine so many things that could go wrong with it...I expect that most cancers will be cureable within the next 20 years or so, mostly through employing a patient's own immune system against the tumor.
Yes, Here are two recent review articles on tumor vaccine development:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22809568
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22639169 Its an exciting field. In principle, tumors shouldn't grow in most cases, but the ones that do seem to have an immune evasion program. Its not well understood, but many tumors attract macrophages (as they should) then the macrophages switch to a quiescent phenotype (which they should not). Obviously there are some kind of signaling mechanisms that are akin to Obi Wan waving his hand and saying "These are not the cells you're looking for." The idea behind tumor vaccine is that perhaps its possible to expose immune cells to some component of the tumor (secreted vesicle, cell lysate, etc.) ex vivo, so that the immune cells aren't already compromised by the tumor, and then inject them back into the patient. Some preclinical studies have shown a lot of promise, but I don't know if its been advanced to patent trials anywhere.
Sorry about the delayed reply: That's really interesting, but surprising, do all (or even some) immune cells have that sort of plasticity? I was under the impression that it was just B-cell producing the right antibodies, but then again, every time I hear about the human immune system, I am told it is "especially complex". Edit: Link #1 of yours mentions in the abstract that they describe the mechanism in the paper, but I'm behind a paywall and it's too late for me to connect to a computer / network with access. =/The idea behind tumor vaccine is that perhaps its possible to expose immune cells to some component of the tumor (secreted vesicle, cell lysate, etc.) ex vivo, so that the immune cells aren't already compromised by the tumor, and then inject them back into the patient.
Haha, "especially complex" is code for "I don't really understand it, so I'm going to pretend that its too complex to explain to you." I don't think anyone really understands immunology, even immunologists, they just know a lot more facts than we do. But that's the thing about solutions to problems, if they work, who cares why? Don't forget that the IC engine was developed before the ideal gas law. B-cell immunity is one strategy. Another uses dendritic cells or dendritic cell-derived vesicles to stimulate immunity. Its way too complex for me to explain; you wouldn't understand ;)