[Barbara2]

I recently have had some correspondence with someone from the U of Washington regarding their vaccine trial. In order take part in this trial you need to be stage lll or IV. I don't understand why stage 1 or 2 are not included in these trials. It's been said that perhaps vaccines will be most useful for patients whose cancer is in remission, but who are high risk of relapse from minimal residual disease. Yet in order to be eligible for trials, studies, etc, you need to be in stage III or IV neihter of which are not considered an "early" stage of cancer. This doesn't make sense to me.

I thought perhaps I might qualify as I was less than 1/2 centimeter from a 5 cm tumor, which is considered stage III. I just sent off an email to Washington this afternoon with a few more questions, but I doubt that I will make the cut.

One of my questions to her was, how does the U of Washington vaccine trial differ from the one at Windber PA. I have read that there are two types of vaccine strategies currently being tested in patients with breast cancer:
1.Cell-based vaccines
2.Breast cancer antigen specific vaccines.

I asked her if she could tell me what the difference was between the vaccines these two facilities were offering. I believe the U of Wash uses a plasmid-based vaccine, GM-CSF. Windber's E75 vaccine is made from the Her2/neu proten, and GM-CSF. But what is the REAL difference? They are similiar sounding, but there's probably more to it than is obvious in the description. She will check into it and let me know.

Patients with breast cancer are encouraged to enroll in clinicl trials attempting to improve vaccine therapy. The criteria needs to be tweeked a little so more of us can get in........