Human Vaccine Cures Prostate Cancer in Mice

These implications are bigger than huge. As a thirty-something male, I don't believe that this research can proceed fast enough!

And it's far-reaching, as well. This treatment can potentially be applied to just about any type of cancer.

Fund this like you just won the Powerball *and* there's no tomorrow!

!!!

I don't know what more to say than: !!! !
It's just amazing!

I guess the main thing they would need to worry about is making sure the viruses don't attack other parts of the body and set off an autoimmune response, destroying things like brain cells.

Omg, I just thought...

Once is this in widespread use, immunity to these various cancers will become more common as more and more people are inoculated due to coming down with a specific type of cancer.

But then, mothers who breastfeed their children and pass along their immunities... may also be passing along an immunity to a certain type of cancer! Now I'm not an expert on the subject, but it seems to me that within a dozen generations or so, humanity might no longer need to be inoculated against many, or even any, types of cancer. We may someday actually be immune.

What a concept.

If this is true, you can bet your ass that the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry isn't going to take this laying down.
Do you realize how many billions of dollars they're going to loose on cancer care? My concern is not for the safety of the cure, but the revenge of the healthcare machine...

I Am Legend

It doesn't sound like this is a 'vaccine' in the sense that I could get a shot in grade school and be immune for life. The problem is that cancer doesn't trigger a big enough immune response in your body - this kickstarts a temporary response which will give your body the message that 'I am sick'.

Give it a little more credit than that. It also tells your immune system WHERE you are sick. Which is the main point of why this works.

yep I Am Legend is what this is sounding like. im all for a cure of any sickness but first i need 1000% scientific satisfaction and approval.

Uh hold on. How do you get viruses expressing cancer related prostate antigens when you've given them cDNA from healthy prostate tissue?

it was just a matter of time.

Damnit! I've been drinking four cups of disgusting coffee each day for months now because it was shown to reduce the risk of prostate cancer!

*spits out coffee*

*smashes cup on the floor*

I'm not sure if I'm more thrilled about a possible cancer treatment, or the fact that I can go back to avoiding coffee!

Very interesting. Note that it's essentially a "prostate vaccine", not specifically a "prostate cancer vaccine"! I guess the healthy prostate cells are better able to fend off the body's autoimmune attack than the disregulated cancer cells.

Probably what makes this work is that the virus they're using already has a stronger affinity for cancer cells, and that healthy prostate cells are already partially screened from the immune system.

An interesting tightrope to walk, for sure...

Hmm... Apparently, they also get much better results with an "Altered-self epitope expressed library", where the "altered-self" part refers to the fact that they don't use a cDNA library from mouse but from human prostate, to cure prostate cancer in mice.

Because the human proteins are slightly different from the mouse ones, this makes it much easier to stimulate an autoimmune response in the mice. And presumably, once the human proteins are eliminated, the immune systems dampens down again, so you get a bigger initial bang for your buck, with less risk for a runaway autoimmune reaction.

Here's a link to the paper:

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nm.2390.html