An experimental breast cancer vaccine successfully protected mice from breast cancer, and researchers spearheading the work say they're ready to start testing the vaccine in humans.
The research team developed a vaccine that targets the antigen á-lactalbumin and found that it protected all the mice genetically designed to develop breast cancer. Mice injected with a vaccine that omitted the antigen all died. If the same approach works in humans, it can stop the disease before it ever starts.
"We believe that this vaccine will someday be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines have prevented many childhood diseases," says Vincent Tuohy from the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute. "If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer."
- here's the press release
- here's the story from the BBC