Cancer Vaccine

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/04/vaccine.brain.cancer/index.html

The people working at Duke University, researching new therapies for cancer, have come up with a new approach towards its treatment that involves a sort of vaccine. The vaccine itself is not an ordinary vaccine, in the sense that it isn’t applied before the patient gets the disease. This vaccine, instead, works by turning the body’s own immune system against the cancer cells, something that scientists have been working on for a very long time.

The previous problem with such an approach is that there was almost no way to distinguish these cancer cells through any type of known marker, obviously because they were made by the body itself. Now, however, they seem to have found a marker that just might be unique to these cancerous cells—EGFRviii, or “EGFR factor three.” Using this newfound marker, researchers at both Duke and UCSF have created drugs that send the immune system attacking cells that make this protein, which is unique to roughly 40% of the cancerous cells, enough to save a life.

The only difference between the Duke research and that at University of California, San Francisco is that UCSF takes a much more aggressive and somewhat more expensive approach. It involves make a drug unique to every patient. The vaccination would be built off of that person’s own form of cancer, making it much more effective at treatment.

These new developments lead the way in how medicine will approach problems in the future, never afraid to take a step in the wrong direction as long as it means a possibility of ingenuity.

-Ryan Rihani