Despite the development of new breast cancer therapies, roughly 20 percent of the 200,000 women diagnosed with the deadly disease in 2006 will die. Now, researchers are focusing on prevention and applying what they have discovered about breast cancer over the last decade toward creating preventative treatments.
One such treatment, a vaccine recently showcased at the American Association for Cancer Research's Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research meeting in Boston, looks to be very promising for women at high-risk of the disease. The preventative vaccination is currently under trial and is said to home in on specific genetic targets, known as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which lead to early stage cancer formation in the breast's milk ducts.
So far, test subjects have responded well to the vaccine, with 11 out of 12 patients showing signs of increased immune system activity, with some even developing antibodies capable of fighting cancer-causing cells. Half of the participants also had a significantly reduced level of the cancer-causing cells in their system after vaccination.
"We are confident that targeted treatment with this vaccine may effectively fight not only DCIS, but may extend to prevention of breast cancer entirely," says lead researcher Brian J. Czerniecki, of the University of Pennsylvania.
Source: American Association for Cancer Research
