Cancer Vaccine(s)

20. August 2009 by admin.

The term cancer vaccine refers to a vaccine that either prevents infections with cancer-causing viruses, treats existing cancer or prevents the development of cancer in certain high risk individuals.

Some cancers, such as cervical cancer and some liver cancers, are caused by viruses, and traditional vaccines against those viruses, such as HPV vaccine and Hepatitis B vaccine, will prevent those cancers. (These anti-viral vaccines are not further discussed in the rest of this article)

Scientists have also been trying to develop vaccines against existing cancers. Some researchers believe that cancer cells routinely arise and are destroyed by the healthy immune system^[1]; cancer forms when the immune system fails to destroy them^[2]. One approach to cancer vaccination is to separate proteins from cancer cells and immunize cancer patients against those proteins, in the hope of stimulating an immune reaction that would kill the cancer cells. Therapeutic cancer vaccines are being developed for the treatment of breast, lung, colon, skin, kidney, prostate, and other cancers.^[3].

In a phase III trial of follicular lymphoma (a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma), investigators reported that the BiovaxID prolonged remission by 44.2 mo, versus 30.6 mo for the control, at the June 2009 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Onclogy.^[4]

On April 14 2009 Dendreon Corporation announced that their Phase III clinical trial of Provenge, a cancer vaccine designed to treat prostate cancer, had demonstrated an increase in survival. Dendreon expects Provenge to be approved by the FDA by 2010 ^[5]

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