Cancer Vaccine

In Perth's The Sunday Times for Sunday, May 1st, they reported on a new drug being developed as an ovarian cancer vaccine. They report it's moving to its final clinical trial stages, and that early phase clinical trials showed "50% of women stabilised their disease and a quarter had a reduction in the cancer, delaying relapse. It is hoped that if the vaccine is given to women who are diagnosed early, a relapse may not occur."

One big danger with cancer is that cancer cells have a way of hiding themselves from our immune system. The basis of this vaccine is a huge breakthrough in this field. The article claims "The vaccine uses patients' white cells to identify the protein Mucin-1, found in ovarian cancer tumours, and forces the body to create an immune response to kill the tumor."

The article also said that while the trial will be mainly conducted in Melbourne, women in other Australian states can participate.

From the 50% result from earlier trials, and some text saying an expert believes it will only help a small percentage of people, one would have to surmise that the 50% effectiveness result would be a best case scenario. However, considering how brutal ovarian cancer is, due to how hard it is to detect until it's very advanced, 50% or even a 1 in 4 chance of halting it would be a huge miracle.

In summary, I will try to keep track of this as they publish results (though considering it's been studied for 13 years, blogging may be obsolete by the time results come out). I would recommend that any woman who has just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer or who thinks they are at risk due to family history should try to find out about this trial.