CLEVELAND (WJW): is one of the most common types of cancer. And about 300,000 people will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States this year alone.
But what if breast cancer could be completely removed?
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That is the goal of a promising new vaccine against breast cancer, 10 years in the making; Invented and developed by Dr. Vincent Tuohy, an immunologist at the Cleveland Clinic.
“We know enough about the immune system now to test these things. We have the ability, but we’re going to a snail’s pace. We need to be in a warp-speed rhythm, ”Tuohy said.
The clinic partnered with Anixa Biosciences, which has an exclusive worldwide license for the new technology.
This is how it would work. The technology immunizes against a protein that is expressed in a woman’s mammary glands, during the latter part of pregnancy and during lactation. That protein, often a precursor to cancer.
Dr. Amit Kumar, President and CEO of Anixa says: “It is not entirely clear why, but it is starting to be manufactured again and we simply have to teach the immune system to destroy the cells that make that protein. Because those are cancer cells. ”
Preclinical animal testing showed that 100% of the mice that were not vaccinated and received the placebo developed breast cancer and died.
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The initial focus of the vaccine is triple negative breast cancer, the deadliest… but it is expected to eventually prevent other forms of cancer, including ovarian cancer.
“So we envision a 21st century vaccine program here at the Cleveland Clinic that prevents diseases that we face with age and that we believe are completely preventable,” Tuohy said. “We believe that breast cancer, ovarian cancer, perhaps prostate cancer, are preventable diseases and that is why we want to take our vaccine program into the 21st century.”
Now, with FDA approval, human clinical trials for the breast cancer vaccine are expected to begin in spring 2021.
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