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A new vaccine to combat breast cancer has been shown to be safe in a study, giving fresh hope to researchers that a “viable breast cancer vaccine will be seen in our lifetime”.
The research, by Dr George Peoples of the Brooke Army Medical Centre, US, found the therapeutic vaccine AE37 to be safe and well-tolerated in women whose cancer has not spread to the lymph nodes.
For therapeutic vaccines to be effective, they must educate the immune system to recognise the antigen present in the vaccine as harmful and to fight it off when it is encountered in the cancer.
The AE37 vaccine is based on one of two proprietary platform technologies established at Antigen Express, a subsidiary of Generex Biotechnology. The technology helps the body fight cancer by modifying fragments of cancer-associated antigens to increase their potency in stimulating the immune system. The vaccine also leaves an imprint on the immune system to fight cancer should it ever reoccur.
Key to this vaccine breakthrough is the addition of a peptide molecule that acts as a facilitator to immune cells and stimulates the desired immune response.
Generex hailed the completion of the trial, the findings of which are to be published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, as “a significant milestone”.
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