Possible Breast Cancer Vaccine

Image by Lyn Millett via Flickr

Technology Thursday

Trials of a promising breast cancer vaccine are going to be starting soon. This is really more of a Science Thursday than Technology Thursday sort of topic, but I thought it might be nice to focus on something positive for a change of pace, given that most of the news is doom and gloom these days. An article at U.S. News and World Report says:

A study in mice suggests that a preventive breast cancer vaccine might be possible in humans, scientists say. Women may begin taking part in the next stage of research as soon as next year, they added.

"We believe that this vaccine will someday be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines have prevented many childhood diseases," principal investigator Vincent Tuohy, an immunologist in Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute, said in a news release. "If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer."

Some are cautious, of course:

Because the approach is so new, many experts are cautious. "This is interesting, however extremely preliminary work," says Dr. Freya Schnabel, a breast cancer expert at New York University Medical Center who worries that even if the vaccination eventually proved effective, finding the right stage in life to use the vaccine will be challenging.

This weekend is the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Washington D.C. Let's hope that this new vaccine approach works and that real progress can be made in preventing this and other cancers.