ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Washington University researchers find a vaccine that shows promise against aggressive breast cancer.
A small clinical trial conducted at Washington University School of Medicine gave patients with triple-negative breast cancer an investigational vaccine designed to prevent the recurrence of tumors.
Wash U and Siteman Cancer Center surgical oncologist Dr. William Gillanders says these personalized cancer vaccines were found to be quite successful.
"We were successfully able to manufacture a vaccine in almost all the cases," said Gillanders. "And then we were able to demonstrate that the vaccine was able to induce a immune response to the targets that we had identified in the tumors."
Dr. Gillanders says the patients who got the personalized vaccines were much less likely to have disease recurrence.
"One nice thing is that these personalized vaccines have very few side effects," said Dr. Gillanders. "As opposed to many other cancer treatments that have multiple side effects, these vaccines have very few side effects."
Triple negative breast cancer accounts for 15 percent of all breast cancer cases -- but is very deadly.