Progress toward Personalized Cancer Vaccine

Vaccines are on the minds of people around the globe. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently provided an encouraging update on a different kind of vaccine under development – a cancer vaccine.

JAMA reported that a “peptide vaccine personalized for individual patients with different cancer types” cleared a phase 1 clinical trial. This vaccine in development aims to coach the immune system to detect and eliminate any trace amounts of disease that remains after cancer treatment. If barely detectable amounts of cancer remain it can lead to relapse. Researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai identified proteins in a patient’s cancer and then developed an individual vaccine to trigger the body to mount an immune response to prevent recurrence. Stay tuned for larger trials to further test the use of individualized vaccines to eliminate residual cancer cells. P+P United applauds the dedication of biomedical researchers that keep promise alive in the hearts and minds of patients and their loved ones.