From December 2020 to April 2023, an extensive study was undertaken at Immucura, focusing on breast cancer cases to evaluate the efficacy of Dendritic Cell Therapy (DCT) in the cure of breast cancer. The data revealed that breast cancer constituted a substantial portion of cases at Immucura, making up 22.2% of all cancer cases during the specified period. The majority of breast cancer patients presented with advanced and severe grade 4 cancers (69.2%), with approximately 73.1% of cases displaying metastatic breast cancer. In terms of survival rates, the findings offered promising results for breast cancer patients. Over a one-year period, all 23 breast cancer patients survived, achieving a remarkable 100% survival rate. At 3 years, the survival rate remained high at 87.5%, followed by 78.6% at 5 years. Nevertheless, the 10-year survival rate declined to 25%, underscoring the persistent challenges in achieving long-term survival for breast cancer patients. Dendritic Cell Therapy emerged as a groundbreaking immunotherapy approach, demonstrating considerable promise in various cancer types, including breast cancer. By utilizing the patient’s own blood cells (Dendritic Cells) to trigger an immune response against cancer cells, DCT presents an encouraging avenue for breast cancer therapy.
2003–2013, a valuable study: Autologous tumour lysate-pulsed dendritic cell immunotherapy with cytokine-induced killer cells improves survival in stage IV breast cancer
Cancer type: Stage IV breast adenocarcinoma.
Patient conditions: 368 patients were divided into immunotherapy group (treatment group: 188 patients) and chemotherapy group (control group: 180 patients). These women were 18 years and older, with hormone receptor negative or hormone receptor positive but insensitive to endocrine therapy. They had symptomatic visceral metastatic and had completed chemotherapy for at least 1 month.
Treatments: Patients in the treatment group received one cycle of low-dose chemotherapy with Carmofure (100 mg, po, bid) for 5 or 6 days. The infusion of DCs and CIK cells was started at 7-day intervals after chemotherapy. The DC-CIK therapy was repeated four times in a fortnight to form one cycle. At least three cycles of DC-CIK therapy were given.
Results: The immune function is enhanced after DC-CIK therapy. Disease free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were both significantly prolonged in patients in the DC-CIK treatment group (5-year DFS 42%, OS 44%) compared with the patients in control groups (30% and 29%, respectively, p < 0.01). Among the patients, the most common reaction was fever (34.6%); chill was the least common reaction (2.1%).
Conclusion: This research indicates that the combination of DC vaccine and CIK therapy can significantly improve DFS and OS in patients with stage IV breast cancer who only rely on chemotherapy. There is no doubt that DC-CIK is a boon to stage IV breast cancer patients.
Reference:
Esposito A., Santangelo M., Goldhirsch A., Curigliano G., Gelass L., Criscitello C., De Laurentiis M., Fumagalli L., Locatelli M.,
Minchella I., De Placido S.
Dendritic Cell-based vaccines: Clinical applications in breast cancer
Immunotherapy (2014) 6(3), 349-360 ISSN 1750-743X
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