Preliminary research on a new breast cancer vaccine shows that it may be able to prime breast cancer patients’ immune systems to attack tumor cells and offer a powerful new weapon against the disease.
The vaccine focuses on a protein called mammaglobin-A, which is found almost exclusively in about 80 percent of breast cancer patients. The protein’s role in healthy tissue is unclear, but breast tumors express it at abnormally high levels, past research has shown.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis developed the vaccine, which primes a type of white blood cell, part of the body’s adaptive immune system, to seek out and destroy cells with the mammaglobin-A protein.
Fourteen patients with advanced breast were vaccinated and their results were then compared to those of 12 unvaccinated patients. About one year later, one-half of the vaccinated patients showed no cancer progression, more than twice as many as in the control group.
The study, reported in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, showed the vaccine to be safe with few side effects.
Researchers are planning a larger clinical trial to further test the vaccine and are hoping that ultimately it could be used as part of standard breast cancer treatment.
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