Vaccines are often called the miracle of modern medicine for their ability to target the immune system against disease-causing viruses and bacteria. Since they work against infectious diseases, why not against breast cancer?
Keith Knutson, an immunologist at Mayo Clinic, who along with his colleagues is testing this type of preventive vaccine says, “The whole idea, just like with an infectious disease vaccine, is to identify what’s foreign in the tumor as much as possible and to craft a vaccine that targets what’s foreign. That’s where we’re going to see the power of the immune response in shrinking or preventing cancer.” Fran Visco from the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) states, “We believe that a vaccine approach is certainly the key in preventing people from getting breast cancer to begin with.”