Cancer is an age-related disease and with the graying of the society, there is an increasing need to optimize
cancer management and
therapy for application in elderly patients.
Cancer vaccines that can be applied in both prevention and
therapy are potentially less toxic than
chemotherapy or radiation and could, therefore, be especially suitable for older more frail
cancer patients. In this study, we used syngeneic metastatic (4TO7) and non-metastatic (64pT)
breast tumor models to obtain valuable information on the potential usefulness of MAGE-encoding
cancer vaccines in metastatic and non-metastatic
breast cancer at old age. First, we tested a mouse Mage-
b DNA vaccine in young mice and found a significant preventive effect on the development of
metastases. However, little effect was observed on primary
breast tumors. Second, we studied
tumor progression in relation to aging and found significant smaller
tumors in old compared to young mice. This was associated with an increase in the percentage of CD8(+) T cells in the inguinal lymph nodes at the site of the
tumor at old age. These findings suggest that
breast cancer immunotherapeutic approaches could be a valid strategy even in elderly patients.