A new therapeutic vaccine offers fresh hope for women battling super aggressive triple-negative cancer. The vaccine teaches patients’ immune systems to identify and attack cancer cells. Around 16 out of 18 patients remained cancer-free three years after receiving the vaccine. The researchers from Washington University School of Medicine now want larger clinical trials to prove the vaccine’s effectiveness. Read on to know in detail.
An experimental vaccine could be the best hope for women who are battling an aggressive and hard-to-treat breast cancer, a new study has revealed. The shots, according to experts, are safe and totally effective against triple-negative breast cancer – a kind that otherwise cannot be treated with hormone therapy.
Triple-negative breast cancer is characterized by cancer cells that lack or have low levels of estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2.
The new vaccine killed cancer cells in the immune system
By comparing this vaccine to the traditional surgery undertaken to treat breast cancer, only half of patients usually remain cancer-free after three years, according to historical data. “These results were better than we expected,” said Dr. William Gillanders, senior researcher and professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
How was the trial conducted?
An early clinical trial for the vaccine was conducted with 18 patients of triple-negative breast cancer that had not spread elsewhere in the body, said scientists. Around 10-15 per cent of the breast cancers that occur in the United States are triple-negative, according to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
To date, triple-negative breast cancer has no targeted therapies. It must be treated with traditional approaches like surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, researchers said in background notes.