Cancer Vaccine

By WKRG Staff

Published: Tue, July 10, 2007 - 5:07 am

A generation ago when the war on cancer was declared, everyone thought a vaccine could be on the horizon. Well, that vaccine is still a work in progress.   The scientists inside the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University are taking their best shot at developing one.

     Stephen Albert Johnston, Ph. D. is the research director there and he says research is getting closer to finding the vaccine. "We have probably about two or three good looking candidates right now."

     To create a vaccine, you must first know what you're fighting. Doctor Johnston gives us his explanation of cancer. "Cancer is one of your own cells that's forgotten it's one of your own cells. It's just sort of had a genetic crisis and when it comes out the other side, it starts behaving more like it's an infectious cell like it's there to grow for itself."

     When these wayward cells become cancerous, they produce a protein that is unfamiliar to the body and eventually grows into tumors. Doctor Johnston says it's these proteins that the researchers are trying to identify.

     Dr. Johnston says, "We estimate that we'll probably need to get 10 or 20 different unique things that only tumors have and they'll go into a common tumor bank. Then we have to test those and make sure that they only create an immune response that would kill a tumor cell and not do any damage to your existing cells."

     It's this balance that makes it difficult to come up with a single cancer preventing vaccine. Researchers may need more than one for different kinds of cancer.

     Johnston says, "Are there a few things in common between a large number of tumors- And we're pretty sure we've begun to uncover that there are such things."

     Doctor Johnston says they hope to complete the screening phase in two years and then start clinical trials within three years. He also says if the vaccine is successful, it shouldn't be any more expensive than standard vaccines on the market.

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