Clinical trials of a vaccine designed to protect healthy women against breast cancer could begin within the next two years.
The jab is still under development, but its effectiveness has impressed doctors who tested it on animals prone to the disease.
If the vaccine works on human patients, researchers say doctors could offer it to women before they reach their mid-40s, when the risk of developing breast cancer starts to rise steeply.
“We think it will provide substantial protection,” said Vincent Tuohy, an immunologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. “Our view is that breast cancer is a completely preventable disease.”
Effective cancer vaccines have proved notoriously difficult to make, not least because tumor cells are strikingly similar to healthy tissues.
A poorly designed cancer vaccine could easily turn the immune system against other parts of the body and cause more harm than good, while another problem is that many cancers weaken the immune system as they grow.
Tuohy’s vaccine makes the immune system attack a particular protein found in most breast cancer cells and the mammary tissues of breastfeeding women. As such, it would only be given to women who are not going to breastfeed in the future.
“The frequency of women who breastfeed in their early 40s and above is very low, so we are looking at vaccinating women against the disease from this stage of life onward,” Tuohy said.
Details of the vaccine were reported in the Nature Medicine journal.
The causes of breast cancer are not fully understood, but hormonal changes, genetic factors, a family history of the condition, smoking and drinking alcohol are all known to affect the risk of developing the disease.
Obesity and hormone replacement therapy increase a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer, while bearing children reduces the risk.
Tuohy’s team tested the vaccine on mice bred to be prone to breast cancer. Usually, such mice develop large breast tumors within 10 months of being born.
The researchers injected six mice with a vaccine made from the target protein, alpha-lactalbumin, and a chemical called an adjuvant, which boosts the immune system response to the vaccine.
Six other mice were given a sham vaccine. All the mice were two months old and clear of cancer when they had their jabs.
After 10 months, all the mice that received the sham vaccine had developed serious breast tumors. None of the mice given the real vaccine showed any signs of tumors in their breast tissue.
“Over the duration of the study, it was completely effective,” Tuohy said.
The vaccine was far less effective when administered to mice that already had breast cancer.
Previous studies show half to 70 percent of human breast cancer cells carry the alpha-lactalbumin protein the vaccine targets — figures that suggest the jab would not destroy all of a patient’s breast cancer cells, but the Cleveland Clinic group suspect far more cancer cells produce the protein temporarily as they grow. If they are right, the vaccine could be more effective than expected. Researchers hope to begin human trials within two years, Tuohy said.
“This research could have important implications for how we might prevent breast cancer in the future,” said Caitlin Palframan, policy manager at Breakthrough Breast Cancer.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS