A vaccine against the most aggressive and deadly form of breast cancer is one step closer to reality. The drug is being tested on humans for the first time.
That’s what the Cleveland Clinic in the US made announced on Tuesday. Between 18 and 24 patients who have been cured of triple negative breast cancer in the past three years will receive three injections two weeks apart. If all goes well, the test will be expanded.
Triple negative breast cancer occurs in 12 to 15 percent of patients and more often in African American women and in women with the BRCA1 gene. It is an aggressive form that comes back and metastasizes more often and is also less treatable.
Vaccines have so far only been tested in the lab or in animals, but the US Food and Drug Administration has now allowed testing on humans as well. If the study is successful, the researchers hope to also give the vaccine to healthy people who are at increased risk of the disease, such as women with the BRCA1 gene mutation.
“In the long run, we hope this really becomes a preventative vaccine that can be given to healthy women to prevent them from developing triple negative breast cancer, the form for which we have the least effective treatments,” said study leader Dr. G. Thomas Budd. in a press release.
