Medical Daily reported on Monday that a new breast cancer vaccine has been proven in trial to be not only safe but also effective in slowing the progression of the disease in women with metastatic or advanced forms of the cancer. The trial was conducted on 14 women at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The tests did not cure breast cancer or place It into remission. But the trial has raised hopes of an effective treatment that will have fewer side effects than chemotherapy or radiation.
The vaccine works by attacking cells with a protein called mammaglobin-A, present in 80 percent of breast cancer cells. Since the protein does not occur in normal tissue, the vaccine will stimulate the body’s immune system to attack the cancer and leave the surrounding tissue alone. This aspect is of vital importance for treating cancer without the horrible side effects of more conventional surgery.
Besides surgery, which often involves removing the entire breast, standard breast cancer therapies involve subjecting the cancer site to radiation and chemotherapy. According to the National Cancer Institute, chemo can bring about vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, hair loss, and infections. That is because the treatments attack surrounding tissue as well as the cancer, making it the equivalent of carpet bombing as opposed to the vaccine’s smart bomb.
The next step researchers will endeavor to set up a larger trial consisting of women who have been recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The hope is that the vaccine treatment will be most effective in the early stage, perhaps even providing a cure, something that current cancer vaccines cannot accomplish on their own. The treatment will likely not be in a clinical setting for several years, however.
