Researchers are developing a breast cancer vaccine
While certain breast cancer patients may benefit from a prescription to buy Canadian Tamoxifen, others have a form of the disease that may demand other approaches.
While certain breast cancer patients may benefit from a prescription to buy Canadian Tamoxifen, others have a form of the disease that may demand other approaches. One team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania is creating a vaccine that targets ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), an early form of breast cancer.
Previous attempts to develop such a vaccine focused on tumor cell proteins that were not necessary to the cells' survival. The new approach uses the patient's own immune system cells, which are collected for the laboratory and primed to target the protein HER2/neu, which tumor cells need to thrive.
For the trial, the researchers gave 27 women who were diagnosed with HER2-positive DCIS four weekly doses of the vaccine, followed by surgery to remove any tumors that were present. Results showed that five patients had no tumors at all, while the rest had cells in which the amount of HER2/neu present was reduced by between 20 and 100 percent.
Patients who developed immunity to tumor cells experienced protection for up to 52 months, as published in the Journal of Immunotherapy.
Further research is needed to verify these findings and identify other potential vaccine targets, the scientists said.
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