Breast Cancer Breakthrough: Personalized Tumor Vaccine

Find out about the vaccine that's helping some breast cancer survivors stay in remission.

By Renee Martin-Kratzer
From Reader's Digest
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Breast Cancer Awareness
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Breast cancer survivors who don't respond to the anticancer drug Herceptin may soon have a new weapon: the vaccine NeuVax. According to researchers at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas, the vaccine gets the body's immune system to attack cells with HER-2/neu, a protein found in the majority of breast cancer patients. While Herceptin suppresses the disease in women with high HER-2 levels, it doesn't work in those with low levels, leaving this group of women with few options.
In a study of 163 patients, those with low HER-2 levels who received NeuVax injections following surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation cut their odds of getting cancer again by half, and none of the women died during the study.

Available: 5 years

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From Reader's Digest - October 2008
 
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