Breast cancer is one of the deadliest types of cancer. An estimated 300,000 people in the United States alone were diagnosed with breast cancer in the year 2020 alone.
Clinical trials for the new vaccine to begin spring of 2021
Recently, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently green lighted a breast cancer vaccine technology. It’s a vaccine developed at the Cleveland clinic, and invented by Dr. Vincent Tuohy, a cancer researcher and immunologist at the clinic.
The clinic is working with Anixa Biosciences, which has an exclusive worldwide license to the new technology.
Vaccine expected to work against triple negative breast cancer
The vaccine’s focus is triple negative breast cancer, but it’s expected to eventually work against other forms of cancer.
Preclinical trials conducted on animals showed that 100% of mice that were not vaccinated, got the placebo, developed breast cancer and died. The vaccinated animals, on the other hand, recovered.
“The idea behind taking this vaccine is the body’s immune response would destroy cancer cells before they develop and mature, Tuohy said.
The technology immunizes against a protein that is expressed in the mammary glands of women, during the latter part of gestation and during lactation. That protein is often a precursor to cancer.
‘The shot protects against alpha-lactalbumin, a protein in women’s mammary glands that no longer appears after childbearing years but shows up in many cases of triple negative breast cancer,’ Dr. Tuohy said.
‘This is how it would work. The long-term vision is a woman reaches 40 years old or so, she reaches the high-risk area age for breast cancer, she could come in to her doctor and get her breast cancer vaccine,’
‘Why do these tumors express these proteins? We don’t know. They make a mistake. I’m trying to take advantage of the mistake the tumors make. We’d have to be crazy not to.’ he added