The target

Cancer: An abnormal uncontrolled proliferation of cells. The immune system doesn’t show any response, as the cancer cells are just some normal cells, which have gone crazy. That means that they could deceive our immune system, which recognizes them as normal.

The point of weakness

Cancer cells usually express so-called cancer-specific antigens, which are not otherwise expressed by normal cells.

The mission

Using these antigens as a method of differentiation, we have to teach our immune system to wipe out these cells without affecting the innocent normal ones.

How?

Whole cell vaccines: using tumor cells, derived from a patient or many patients or use human tumor cell lines designed in lab. This will elicit the immune response for all the antigens on cancer cells.

OR,

Antigen vaccines: using a specific antigen on the cancer cell through identifying a certain gene, then cloning the gene, which encodes for it.

Advancing

Adjuvants: using chemical substances to enhance T-cell response such as Interleukin-2 “IL2”.

Vector: using viral vectors to deliver the gene of interest to cells, which makes the cancer more visible to the immune system.

Major obstacle

One major obstacle facing cancer vaccines is that the response is not readily measurable. For chemotherapeutic drugs development, the end point is usually progression-free survival, which has shorter-term outcomes. Cancer vaccines are characterized by longer-term outcomes and increased survival rate.

For more information, Read here.

From a humble point of view, as I was attending a bioinformatics and genomics workshop held in FOPCU, the lecturer was pointing to us, that up until now, no one has managed to come up with a method capable of converting a full-functioning protein back into the original nucleotide sequence on its corresponding gene. At that instance, the following thought occurred to me, as to why this would ever be needed?

For starters, we already have the protein in hand, its 3D structure is, for many, completely figured out and some even their orientation in space, their actions and functions. Then, as far as I understand, being the mould from which a protein is later assembled is the only function a gene, or one which is expressed anyways, has. Knowing that for instance, in gastrin hormone, the 4^th amino acid is leucine, would it matter whether it was translated from the codon CUA and not UUG?

Now three thoughts impose themselves. I could only imagine that the presence of SNPs (which is basically a nucleotide that varies among individuals and thought to influence certain traits) within the nucleotide sequence of the gene is the reason behind the researchers’ attention. However, this ultimately means, that if a method were to exist, it would have to produce a different nucleotide sequence for proteins coming from different people. Simple logic.

Another probable explanation, that could come to mind, would be the existence of a difference in the structure of the leucine amino acid, held on tRNA molecules with varying anticodons, where each would have some “characteristic” features that distinguish it from the other tRNA. If that were the case, then it probably has managed to fly below the radar for quite some time, as no matter which reference I turn to, it is taken for granted that these amino acids are carbon copies. So being non-identical in any way, would cause the resulting protein to function in a slightly different manner, which could explain the diversity of their actions in varying individuals. Who knows?

Last, but not least, is the possibility of gaining fast insight into the genome of a previously undiscovered species of living organism, where one can quickly figure out all the expressed genes through this simple task of “reverse translation”. However sequences of the unexpressed genes would still have to adopt the old-fashioned way. No choice there!

Just wondering what the future has in store.