Originally published June 25 2005
Cancer vaccines enter final stage of testing
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
According to the Kansas City Star, more than a dozen cancer vaccines, including ones for prostate, skin, kidney, lung, breast, ovarian, pancreatic, colorectal and brain cancer, as well as for leukemia and myeloma, have entered the final stage of human testing, just before they are sent to the FDA for marketing approval.
More than a dozen cancer vaccines are now in the final phase of human testing, the last step before Food and Drug Administration approval is sought for marketing.
Unlike conventional disease-preventing vaccines, the new ones are designed to work after cancer develops by provoking a heightened immune response.
The company is about to begin human testing of a therapeutic cervical-cancer vaccine that produced stunning results in mice.
Paterson and two other vaccine pioneers will talk about their infant industry on June 20 at the Biotechnology Industry Organization's annual gathering, this year in Philadelphia.
Olivera Finn, a University of Pittsburgh immunologist, will make the provocative argument that treatment vaccines will not do much to reduce the toll of cancer unless they are also used in a traditional way: to prevent the disease in high-risk patients.
"If we diagnose a pre-malignant lesion - for example, in the lungs - right now that person is watched until he develops cancer, or he's given a cytotoxic therapy," she said.
Two new vaccines, both racing toward FDA approval, avert infection with human papillomavirus, which causes cervical cancer.
But for most cancers, jump-starting the immune system is complicated by the fact that the disease starts with enemies from within - the body's own cells that turn malignant due to genetic or environmental forces.
Cancer cells have antigens that are unique or unusually abundant, but the immune system is very tolerant of these abnormal cells, like the parent of a troubled child.
Even though researchers began isolating cancer antigens in 1991 - the breakthrough was with melanoma cells - they have had difficulty presenting these antigens to the body in ways that prompt an immune response.
Without the vaccine, he had about a one in three chance of surviving five years.
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