Would be nice if this worked and breast cancer could be one day be avoided through just one jab. There is always hope I guess
Hopes for breast cancer vaccineVIVIENNE RYAN, The West Australian June 1, 2010, 2:31 am
A vaccine said to have the potential to wipe out up to 70 per cent of breast cancers is poised for human trials.
The US research was met with cautious optimism in Australia yesterday, with National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre chief executive Helen Zorbas saying the vaccine is a "novel and intelligent approach to trying to prevent breast cancer".
"It certainly is one that we are watching with great interest and the results in mice are very impressive," she said. "But there has to be some caution before we can suggest that it is a prevention for breast cancer to be used in humans."
She was responding to claims in the medical journal Nature Medicine at the weekend from Ohio immunologist Vincent Tuohy, who said his successful breast cancer vaccine trials in mice could offer protection for women up to their mid-40s.
"We truly believe that a preventive breast cancer vaccine will do to breast cancer what the polio vaccine has done to polio," Dr Tuohy said.
He hopes to start human trials next year.
The vaccine is based on the protein alpha-lactalbumin which exists in most breast tumours.
The drug stimulates the immune system to destroy the protein as it appears, which stops tumours forming. In trials, it was found to keep mice tumour-free.
Ms Zorbas said previous positive animal cancer trials could not be replicated in humans, but the results were still exciting.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer for women, with about 13,000 Australians expected to be diagnosed this year. It is found in about 100 Australian men each year.
The NBOCC expects these numbers to rise as the population ages.
In 2007, the most recent statistics on breast cancer mortality, 256 people in WA died, making it the second biggest killer of women after lung cancer, according to the WA Cancer Council.
There is no vaccine against breast cancer, unlike cervical cancer, which Cancer Council education and research director Terry Slevin put down to there being more known about cervical cancer. He said the excitement about a vaccine had to be tempered with caution. It was necessary to test any vaccine to make sure it was safe and effective.
"There are still a lot of things we don't know about what causes breast cancer," he said. "So while there may well be a limited notion about a vaccine trial in mice, it is important not to translate that immediately to the expectation of an accurate and successful vaccine for humans until we have much more data."
Breast Cancer Vaccine
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