This article is about a panel at Health Journalism 2008.
Panelists:
• John L. Marshall, M.D., division chief, associate professor of medicine and chief, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Georgetown University Hospital; associate director, clinical research, Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center
• Richard Schlegel, M.D., Ph.D., chairman and professor, Department of Pathology, Georgetown University Medical Center
• Melinda Wharton, M.D., M.P.H., Centers for Disease Control | Presentation – Immunization: Making it work
• Moderator: Steve Sternberg, reporter, USA Today
By Michele Skalicky
KSMU-FM, Springfield, Mo.
Research into new vaccines for cancer and other diseases is ongoing, and attendees got an update during Health Journalism 2008.
Steve Sternberg, reporter for USA Today, moderated a panel that included Dr. Richard Schlegel, professor and chair of the Department of Pathology at Georgetown University. Other panelists were Dr. Melinda Wharton, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. John Marshall, medical oncologist at Georgetown University Hospital.
According to Wharton, a vaccine for hepatitis A, which was recently added to the childhood vaccination schedule, has dramatically reduced the disease in the American Indian/Alaskan Native population.
She also discussed how vaccines make it from the lab into doctors' offices.
According to Wharton, the process is lengthy. "In the private sector, insured people may or may not have new vaccines covered," she said. It may take awhile before companies decide to cover the vaccines for their employees, she added.
Schlegel pioneered the vaccine for HPV, the only new vaccine so far this century. He discussed how all cervical cancers express the E6 and E7 genes. "If you can shut them off at the molecular level," he said, "you can shut down cervical cancer."
According to Schlegel, cervical cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women. Four out of five cases of cervical cancer are in developing countries, he said, and, in the United States, there's a much higher rate of cervical cancer along the Appalachian Trail.
He said the HPV vaccine needs to become more affordable in order to reverse those statistics. That, he said, would require things such as lower manufacturing costs and higher stability of the vaccine.
According to Schlegel, he's working on a second generation of the vaccine called Capsomere that's expected to be more affordable than what's currently available.
John Marshall discussed his research into the creation of a therapeutic vaccine for chronic diseases. He said that, for the past 10 years, researchers have been looking into using the immune system to fight disease. According to Marshall, only today do we have the technology and understanding to wage a real war on cancer.
There's a lot of data available, he said, but not much science. But, he added, progress is being made.
The immune system can, if stimulated in the right way, go after cancers, Marshall said. But he said that they need to know how to "cut the brakes" on the immune system, too.
He warns people not to be complacent. According to Marshall, no one should accept current therapies as "standard."
