Immunomodulation for cancer treatment is a very exciting area of research! Using induced stem cells as opposed to embryonic stem cells solves an ethical conundrum that would have probably otherwise prevented the use of this type of therapy in humans. Also - the iPSC therapeutic strategy allows cells to be exposed to epitopes (proteins that stimulate the immune system) that we don't know about yet, a limitation of current T-Cell therapies. It is important to mention that these immune responses weren't accomplished with iPSCs alone, but with irradiated iPSCs. This essentially lyses the cells and allows the cell's proteins to dump into the blood stream so that the immune system can be activated. Also! Unmethylated DNA was added to the irradiated iPSCs in the most effective treatment group. Unmethylated DNA is something that is present in non-differentiated cells, a characteristic which is often shared with cancer cells who are thought to "de-differentiate" from their tissue of origin (often referred to as the epithelial to mesenchymal transition). These results are interesting even though the 70% figure is from an experiment with an n of 10. The p value is 0.0001 which is pretty tasty. One should keep in mind though that murine (mouse) immune systems are really different from human immune systems. The mouse strains used in this study - the C57BL/6 and FVB mouse strains are known to be fairly resistant to developing tumors. Also, after reading the paper, I didn't see any experiment to test if there were any adverse side affects (it's probably in the supplemental methods). One would think that this type of therapy could cause an adverse reaction and a potential immune response against normal stem cells. This being said, I think this is a very promising study. Whenever you look at a paper - note the quality of the journal. Cell is a very prestigious journal but everyone makes mistakes.
RE: Could We Be Protected From Cancer By A Vaccine Made From Stem Cells