The dangerous skin cancer melanoma is haunting light-skinned Estonians ever more frequently. Wouldn’t it be good if one could vaccinate oneself against this type of cancer if necessary?
Excessive sunbathing and using tanning beds might give Estonians a Southern swarthy look but, in addition, dangerously damaged cells. With bad luck this threatens to develop into melanoma, a type of skin cancer which comprises only a tenth of skin cancers but is aggressive and malignant.
Ultraviolet rays damaging the DNA of skin’s pigment cells are of cardinal importance in the development of melanoma. Oncologists estimate that melanoma incidence is increasing by 5- 7 per cent a year in Estonia. People aged 20-59 years are considered the age group at risk with a maximum risk lying with 30-year-olds.
“Melanoma is a serious problem. It is already quietly being called an epidemic,” knows Lilian Järvekülg, a scientist at the Competence Centre for Cancer Research (CCCR) in Tallinn and professor and head of the Chair of Molecular Diagnostics at Tallinn University of Technology’s Department of Gene Technology. “However, presently there is no vaccine against melanoma.”
A vaccine could prove beneficial in cases where a person has been operated on for melanoma but there is a risk for the return of cancer as new metastases. In people with a familial history suggesting hereditary risk for melanoma pre-emptive vaccination might be considered – if there only was such a vaccine.
It appears that in the laboratories of CCCR operating in the building of natural sciences of TUT a candidate for the vaccine actually exists. It is true that so far it has only been tested in mice but the tests have been successful.
A few months ago scientists studied mice that had been infected with melanoma and vaccinated thereafter. The vaccine made the mice’s immune system effectively fight the melanoma.
“When we injected our vaccine to mice their melanomas started to patently regress and decrease in size,” describes Sirje Rüütel-Boudinot, immunologist at CCCR and TUT.
How does this candidate vaccine created by Estonians work? As in many other CCCR projects, synergy of different study areas was crucial here, especially the prolific cooperation of a researcher of plant viruses, Lilian Järvekülg and immunologist Sirje Rüütel-Boudinot. The idea of using plant virus A’s “empty shell”, its protein particle without the virus’s genetic code, was clasped.