University of Washington Dr. Mary Lenora Disis has spent her career learning how the body fights cancer and working to develop a cure. She believes there could be a breast cancer vaccine within 10 years, according to UW Medicine.
“We’ve kind of come to a tipping point in our understanding of cancer vaccines,” said Dr. Disis. “With the body of work out there now, with the number of investigators out there now, with the data I’m seeing published now, I think that is a reasonable goal to hit.”
According to the American Cancer Society, around 20% of breast tumors have higher levels of a protein called HER2. Therefore the cancers are called HER2-positive breast cancers.
The vaccine Dr. Disis is working on targets HER2-positive breast cancers and is in Phase 2 of clinical trials.
Dr. Disis is also leading a trial of another vaccine “aimed at protecting high-risk patients from developing breast cancer.”
“We developed a vaccine that targets five proteins that are very commonly upregulated in breast cancer stem cells,” she said. “We’re testing it in patients who have triple-negative breast cancer because their breast cancers have a lot of stem cell-like features.”
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