Dr. Robert Vonderheide, Director of Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center, was recently quoted in an article from Time Magazine titled, “The Race to Make a Vaccine for Breast Cancer” where he discusses the latest in cancer vaccine research. Medical oncologists at Penn Medicine are internationally recognized for the use of vaccines to stimulate the immune system in the treatment of cancer. Cancer vaccines are used to treat cancers that have already developed, with the objective to delay or stop cancer cell growth, shrink tumors, prevent cancer from coming back and eliminate cancer cells that have not been killed by other forms of treatment.

From the Time Magazine article:

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 other conditions that have long plagued humanity—like cancer?

“To say that we are working on a vaccine to prevent cancers for the rest of people’s lives sounds like something from Star Wars,” says Dr. Robert Vonderheide, director of the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn Medicine. “But it’s not a concept that’s totally uncharted.”

The article continues:

Vaccines for cancer already exist. Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, for example, largely prevent cervical cancer by targeting the HPV strains that trigger tumor growths. But most types of cancer aren’t caused by viruses, so the holy grail would be to train the body to recognize tumor cells instead. Researchers have been investigating ways to do this, starting with immunizing people who have already developed cancer in order to reduce their risk of recurrences. Improvements in the accuracy and speed of genetic sequencing have provided a clearer window into what makes cancer cells start to grow abnormally, and new drug therapies that target those genetic changes have also transformed the way doctors treat the disease. For instance, recently developed treatments can teach the immune system to seek out and destroy cancer cells.

To date, however, these immunotherapy treatments have been focused mostly on patients with advanced disease that has spread throughout their bodies, and vaccines to target those widespread cancer cells have generally been a last-resort effort to control the disease. Such therapeutic cancer vaccines remain a work in progress, but their limited success, along with new understanding of the genetic drivers behind cancer growth, have made the idea of a vaccine that could actually prevent cancer more realistic.

The full article from Time Magazine is available here (by Alice Park)