HER2 Support Group Forums - Cancer Vaccines: Newseek/Sharon Begley

Hi all (thanks, Jackie, for showing me how to move this),
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newswee...of-cancer.html

This is an interesting 3-page article, best to read it all. But in case you're too rushed, here's one bc-specific quotation:

Harnessing the immune system is completely counter to how cancer is now treated, largely by chemotherapy and radiation. Both can weaken the immune system, which is why some alternative practitioners advise against them. Following that advice can be fatal. But the importance of the immune system in fighting cancer is getting new respect from the nation’s leading oncology researchers. It has also inspired a Hail Mary play from a leading advocacy group. Last year, the National Breast Cancer Coalition launched the Artemis Project with the audacious aim of eliminating breast cancer by Jan. 1, 2020. Since the most likely way to accomplish that is through vaccines, says president Fran Visco, NBCC is awarding seed grants for research on, for instance, which antigens make good targets.

NBCC has good timing: research on breast-cancer vaccines is exploding. Last week, the biotechnology firm Antigen Express, Inc., announced that 89 percent of patients who received its her2/neu vaccine were alive after 22 months, compared with 72 percent of nonvaccinated women. The company hopes to get FDA approval for a phase-three trial in 2012. Interestingly, the vaccine seems to help even women who don’t qualify for the breast-cancer drug Herceptin because their levels of her2/neu are too low. “We think 75 percent of women with breast cancer could be candidates for the vaccine,” says president Eric von Hofe.