Israeli scientists in ovarian cancer vaccine breakthrough

Most cancer immunotherapy research to date has focused on T cells – also known as killer cells – rather than the B cells that tag the cancer as a target but do not actually attack.

But Prof Ziv Shulman and his team made a stunning discovery: that the B cells can also fight cancer directly by producing antibodies that specifically recognise and target ovarian cancer cells.

They also found that B cells remember the cancer and can respond quickly and powerfully if they see it again.

It’s long been known that so-called “memory B cells” respond to external threats – bacteria and viruses – but not an internal enemy, such as cancer.

Ovarian cancer is the sixth most common cause of cancer death in the UK, claiming almost 4,000 lives a year.

Writing for the JC, medical expert Dr Ellie Cannon said: “To utilise B cells against cancer really is a breakthrough. The last few years has seen the advent of immune treatments for cancer, sometimes called immunotherapy.

“This utilises medications that trigger the body’s own immune system to fight cancer cells.”

Prof Shulman’s own team were surprised to find an unexpected ally in the fight against cancer that has been hiding in plain sight.

Danny Altmann, Professor of Immunology at Imperial College, London, said: “Normally when people like me look into tumours and see B cells, they’re not markers of good outcome and we’re not even sure what their relevance is.” But he said Prof Shulman had uncovered what could lead to “a whole new way of treating this kind of cancer”.

Scavenger cells (green) engulf activated B cells (pink), thereby suppressing local immune response. The cells were imaged in three dimensions using a confocal microscope (Image: Weizmann Institute of Science)[Missing Credit]

Prof Shulman led a research team at the Weizmann’s Department of Systems Immunology that examined lymph node cells from 11 patients with the most common type of ovarian cancer.

They were expecting to find immune cells actively fighting the cancer, but instead they found memory B cells that appeared to be asleep on the job.

These cells are already programmed with genetic instructions to make antibodies that bind to ovarian cancer. What they need is a wake-up call – and that is what a future vaccine could provide.

Prof Altmann said: “It’s a kind of part of the cancer surgeon’s rulebook that you take out the draining lymph node (which is particularly susceptible to cancer) in case there are metastatic cells there.

“But Shulman’s saying, hang on a minute, that’s the last thing you’d want to do here because we’re saying that your protective cells are sitting there, percolating immune responses.

“This is something that’s largely been overlooked. It hasn’t been part of the core cancer textbook at all.”

The team at Weizmann have already made monoclonal antibodies – identical copies of one specific antibody that binds to ovarian cancer cells.

These monoclonal antibodies are able to provide immediate protection by directly attacking cancer cells. But a vaccine would go a step further – training the immune system to make its own antibodies long-term.

Prof Altmann said: “They’ve already made this panel of monoclonal antibodies, and I’d probably bet my house on the idea that in five years’ time, they or somebody else will have a company selling those antibodies and putting them into clinical trials to see if they can kill people’s ovarian tumours.”

Prof Shulman and his team made the breakthrough even though their lab was among 55 that were destroyed in a direct hit by an Iranian ballistic missile in June 2025.

The attack wrecked two buildings – one housing life sciences labs and a second that was under construction – together with decades of research, data, irreplaceable biological samples and specialist equipment.

Netanyahu during a visit to the Weizmann Institute of Science, hit by an Iranian missile barrage (Photo by JACK GUEZ/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Prof Altmann said: “While immunologists stay well clear of the politics of conflict, I note the point that Weizmann Institute immunology has always exemplified comprehensively international outreach and building of bridges for global health.

“In this context, it was devastating to see tumour immunology labs – surely, by any token, a force for good – targeted and destroyed by missile attack, and gratifying to see such strong data nevertheless emerge.”

While other ovarian cancer vaccine projects are being researched globally, this discovery is hugely significant because it proves something scientists previously thought impossible: that immune memory can work against cancer, not just infections.

Vaccine researchers now have a new different mechanism to target ovarian cancer – one that activates the body’s own natural memory cells rather than trying to train the immune system from scratch.

It is well established that so-called B cells within our bodies fight viruses and bacteria by differentiating into antibody-secreting cells. Among them are memory B cells. They stay in the body for long periods, remember the infection they have fought before and are primed to fight it again.

The new research opens the door to a therapeutic vaccine, primarily for women after surgery or chemotherapy to prevent recurrence (there is a 70 per cent relapse rate with ovarian cancer).

“We were amazed to find that more than a third of the memory-derived antibodies bound strongly to ovarian cancer cells,” said Prof Shulman.

“Because cancer cells originate from the body’s own healthy cells, we wondered at first whether the antibodies were simply attacking human cells indiscriminately, but they bound less effectively to non-cancer cell types. In other words, the memory cells turned out to be a targeted weapon against ovarian cancer.

“Since there had been no previous reports of effective antibody-mediated immune memory against cancer, the researchers were initially sceptical. But we decided to give them a chance. We sequenced their genetic recipe for antibodies and produced them artificially in the lab.”

The study was led by Nachum Nathan and conducted in collaboration with Prof Ram Eitan and Dr Oded Raban from Rabin Medical Centre.

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