A possible Vaccine for Cancer ?

The vaccine that is being referred to is for a particular type of breast cancer called HER2-positive breast cancer. So there‘s a receptor that drives that disease and the drug Herceptin is used for those patients so that drug plus surgery and radiation has led to significant improvement in survival, but there are still some patients that recur and ultimately succumb to the disease. Elizabeth Mittendorf, who led a trial at MD Anderson Cancer Center, asked the question: "After treatment if we were to give those patients several rounds of this vaccine, which has this abnormal HER2 protein packaged in it, would we reduce the rate of recurrence?’ The results were striking. We had a very significant reduction in the recurrence of rates with about a 50 percent reduction which will translate into thousands of lives each year with women with that particular breast cancer."