Desperate cancer patients are developing their own immunotherapies in a last-ditch bid for an effective treatment, Gizmodo reports.
People like Elen and her brother Jo are trying to make their own, customized therapies when none are otherwise available, it adds. The siblings had found a study from Chinese researchers who developed a peptide vaccine to treat an aggressive type of lung cancer, which Elen's husband Vlad had. Doctors had told Vlad there was no more they could do for him, and says Elen and Jo were spurred to try to make the vaccine.
And, according to Gizmodo, they aren't the only ones, and Jo and the husband of another cancer patient have published a DIY cancer vaccine guide online.
However, it's unlikely that homemade vaccines will work, Steinar Madsen, the medical director of the Norwegian Medicines Agency, tells Gizmodo. He adds that the treatments could trigger allergic reactions.
"It's still a field faced with large challenges, so I struggle to see how a DIY approach would work," Susanna Greer, the director of clinical research and oncology at the American Cancer Society, adds at Gizmodo. "It's not something I would recommend."