Imagine a vaccine for adult women that would prevent breast cancer, just like the vaccines received as children prevented polio. Cleveland Clinic researchers have done just that, completing a trial that showed 100% effectiveness for a new breast cancer vaccine in mice — and they want to begin testing on women over 40 as soon as possible.
The researchers found that a single vaccination with the antigen α-lactalbumin prevents breast cancer tumors from forming in mice, while also inhibiting the growth of already existing tumors. Human trials could begin within the next year. If successful, it would be the first vaccine to prevent breast cancer.
“We believe that this vaccine will someday be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines prevent polio and measles in children,” said Vincent Tuohy, Ph.D., the study’s principal investigator and an immunologist in Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute Department of Immunology. “If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer.”
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