New Vaccines for Cancer

BOSTON (Ivanhoe Newswire) — Could the cure for breast cancer come in a shot? What about a vaccine to treat prostate cancer? Doctors are now looking past measles and mumps and developing vaccines to treat. Even prevent cancer. Now, we take you on a tour of three major medical centers using three new vaccines to target and kill cancer.

Vaccine target number one: lung cancer.

Jimenez is part of a trial testing a treatment that targets a protein found in one-third of non-small cell lung cancer patients.

Early studies announced at a national meeting show after surgery patients who get the vaccine have up to a 43 percent lower risk of their cancer coming back.

Vaccine target number two: advanced prostate cancer.

“We are talking about therapeutic vaccines that treat cancer by revving up the immune system,” In a three-year study of an experimental vaccine called Prostvac-VF, 30 percent of patients who got the vaccine were alive. Only 17 percent of those who got a placebo survived that long. A second vaccine recently FDA approved called Provenge improved three year survival by nearly 40 percent.

Finally – a breast cancer vaccine is in the works at Cleveland Clinic.

The vaccine would tell the immune system to kill the cancer just when it’s starting to form.

“I see the immune system as a weapon system, a very powerful biologic weapon that we can use to target in a very defined way like a smart bomb,”

Three vaccines taking aim at three of the most common kinds of cancer.