National Daily

Vaccines for breast cancer, promising —Study

BUT research still to really pan out, expert warns.
A new research has shown that women with metastatic breast cancer who developed an immune response to an investigational vaccine lived twice as long as those who didn't have an immune response.

The study author Dr. Susan Domchek, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania said Metastatic breast cancer is treatable but not curable, but the ultimate hope is to cure the cancer and breast cancer vaccines are one possible way to try to control the disease's spread.

In her study, Domchek used pieces of a protein called human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) peptide to vaccinate 19 women with breast cancer that had spread. The peptide is nearly universally over expressed in human cancers and is recognized by certain T-cells in the body's immune system.

At the start of the study, the women had no measurable T-cell response to hTERT. After up to eight vaccinations with the hTERT peptide, however, 13 of the 19 women made T-cells that reacted to the peptide.
"We biopsied the patients' breast cancer and saw that we could see these T-cells in the tumors themselves," she said. "And, in some cases, we could see evidence of tumor cells' death."

"Those who responded lived significantly longer," she said. "People who responded lived 32 months versus a median of 17 [for those who did not respond]. Three of the women who were responders have lived more than three years."
Her findings are expected to be discussed this week at the Department of Defense Era of Hope breast cancer research meeting, in Baltimore.