This story was on our local news today

kimbly

http://www.wxyz.com/news/story.aspx?content_id=adb3c9ac-d04e-4a87-b036-d046636d4ab0

ksmerrill

I read about this, too!  What a tremendous breakthrough for HER2+ breast cancer.  Here's the full article I read:

 Breast Cancer Vaccine Helps Fight Tumors

WASHINGTON (Sept. 15) - Researchers who designed one experimental breast cancer vaccine say they have fine-tuned the process and come up with another that they hope will be more effective.  Their new vaccine delivers a cancer-fighting gene into cells, which then produce immune system proteins as well as tumor-destroying cells.  "In our own mind it is a very significant advance because we have put the gene into the cells in the body. The vaccine is produced by your own cells," Wei-Zen Wei of Wayne State University in Detroit, who led the study, said in a telephone interview. "It is made right in your body."  The vaccine eliminated tumors in mice from a type of cancer called HER2 positive cancer, they reported in the journal Cancer Research. HER2-positive cancers account for between 20 percent and 30 percent of breast cancers.  It even worked to eliminate HER2 tumors that had developed resistance to drugs designed to fight them, the said.  The HER2/neu protein is over-expressed, meaning it is over-active, in several tumors including breast, colorectal and ovarian cancer.  Herceptin, also known as trastuzumab, an expensive antibody-based drug made by Genentech Inc, can treat these tumors. But many patients eventually acquire what is known as resistance and the tumors start growing again.  ANTIBODIES AND KILLER T-CELLS Wei's team made a vaccine using so-called naked DNA from genes that produce the HER2 receptor -- the molecular signal for the breast cancer tumors.  They put this DNA, along with an immune system stimulant, into a ring of genetic material, called a plasmid, from a bacterium.  They used a process called electroporation, which employs an electrical pulse, to force the compound through skin and muscle to immunize mice.  Once in the leg muscles, the genes went to cells, which started producing HER2 receptors that activated antibodies and immune cells called killer T-cells, they reported.  "The immune system goes around the body to look for cancer cells," Wei said. When they then injected HER2-positive breast tumors into the mice, their bodies eradicated them.  "Both tumor cells that respond to current targeted therapies and those that are resistant to these treatments were eradicated," Wei said. "This may be an answer for women with these tumors who become resistant to the current therapies."  It might even be used to prevent cancer from coming back in women who have been successfully treated using Herceptin or other drugs, she said.  Several groups are working on breast cancer vaccines that target HER2, including Seattle-based Dendreon Corp, which calls its vaccine Neuvenge, and privately held Apthera, whose vaccine is called Neuvax.

Anonymous

Thank you for posting this article.  It made me feel better.  I believe that with what my body is fighting off already that it can't take preventative poisoning.  I read about all the fighters on this site, and I don't feel like a coward, but a wild card.  Some people take the statistics because they are better than no chance at all.  I look at the statistics and weigh them with the complications.

I'm still looking for the post for people who are depressed long before they are diagnosed with cancer.  I think it makes a difference.  Clinical depression isn't a matter of attitude, it's a matter of brain chemistry.  I'll find myself taken down by the stress of medication and treatment long before the illness of cancer.  I want to see something that I can use to fight tumors with, I just can't accept, "This is the best we can offer you," when I wasn't okay and up to a long fight going into the proposed treatment to begin with.

Thank you, again, for sharing.  You made a difference to this "one starfish on the beach."

mthomp2020

This really could be a big breakthrough, especially for those of us who are Stage IV.  I'm hoping it goes into human trials very, very soon.  This could hopefully eliminate the need to do chemo for some of us.  Keeping all my fingers crossed on this one!