First Preventative Cancer Vaccine Demonstrated to Work in Mice

By Clay Dillow Posted 06.03.2010 at 2:51 pm 7 Comments

Breast Cancer Cells crafty dame via Flickr

In a breakthrough that could shake up the way researchers think about cancer vaccines, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic have found a protein that appears to prepare the immune system to prevent cancer.

Cancer vaccines, unlike traditional vaccines, are generally designed to arm the immune system with the tools to fight a certain existing disease or cancer-causing virus, rather than directly prevent cancer from developing. But researchers have found a protein manufactured in cancerous breast cells that primes the immune system to attack tumor cells themselves and prevent the growth of tumors altogether.

In mice that had been pre-engineered to develop breast cancer, an injection of the protein stopped the cancer from ever forming. Healthy lactating cells produce the protein as well, and as such it could one day provide a vaccine that prevents breast cancer in non-lactating women.

The development could shake up the way medical researchers approach cancer vaccines, creating pharmaceutical that actually prevent cancer itself rather than trying to mitigate the various causes of certain cancers.

[New Scientist]

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7 Comments

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chieffranky

06/04/10 at 3:22 am

This blatant advertising is appalling on this very interesting article.

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Crankyjoe

06/04/10 at 9:41 am

WHY ISN'T THIS A HEADLINE????

CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS Many many news outlets. Many of them 24 hour news cycles. Why do they not have time to talk about a potential VACCINE for BREAST CANCER?

It Boggles the mind.

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Ixidor

06/04/10 at 10:09 am

The thing is, I've noticed that popsci tends to get their info much faster than mainstream media, years faster sometimes. This could owe to the tendency that most mainstream media try to do stories on solid results since they don't want to be known as "the-news-that-fills-people's-hopes-just-to-let-them-down"-channel. It's a reputation sort of thing and they feel its a gamble. Antibody-equipped nanobeads cancer cells that could be irradiated with harmless IR to cook cancer cells was a prime example. Took the media over 2 yrs to even get to that after popsci covered it.

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ste3v3

06/04/10 at 11:00 am

I hope this tech didn't develop from those hideous naked mole rats!

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eggyghw

06/04/10 at 12:48 pm

MSNBC did report the story including an interview with the head of the research lab

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