Input Stories

Medical researchers are making strides in creating cancer vaccines (The Wall Street Journal, subscription).

The new frontier: Some of these vaccines are designed to safeguard people who have a genetic predisposition for certain cancers, and other shots are meant to halt the course of the disease when a patient is suffering from precancerous lesions only.

• While certain vaccines already prevent cancer by defeating viruses that can cause it, like HPV or hepatitis V, these new vaccines are targeting cancers that aren’t related to infections (the majority of cancers are not). 

How it works : “Researchers are testing proteins [that mutated cells] produce as they become cancerous as potential targets for vaccines. The goal is to introduce those proteins to the body and flag them as dangerous. That would train the immune system to hunt down those abnormal cells, similar to attacking an infection.”

• A team of Johns Hopkins oncology researchers has developed a vaccine using pieces of mutated proteins related to the KRAS gene, “which can malfunction and spur tumor growth for lung, pancreatic and other cancers.” The vaccine also includes a drug that can activate immune cells.
• “The shot showed promise in an early trial with 15 people at high risk for pancreatic cancer. At four months, all the participants had generated immune responses against the KRAS proteins, with no safety concerns.”

Looking ahead: Other promising trials include a shot for people who carry BRCA gene mutations, which can lead to breast and ovarian cancers. Can we expect a universal cancer vaccine some day?

• While one prominent cancer researcher said it might be possible, others remain skeptical of such a panacea.
• “‘We don’t have a universal flu vaccine, let alone an all-infectious-disease vaccine,’ says Dr. G. Thomas Budd, who is leading a study at the Cleveland Clinic of a vaccine designed to prevent one kind of breast cancer.”
• Instead, Budd predicted, people might get a selection of vaccines aimed at the riskiest cancers.