Taking a Jab at Cancer
Combined with drugs, vaccines against tumors may finally be working
Imagine a patient getting a vaccine injection in the doctor’s office—but not to ward off a virus or a bacterium that causes smallpox, measles, or any other infectious disease. This vaccine is for cancer, specifically for a tumor already growing within the patient’s body. The treatment, perhaps in combination with others, is intended to train the patient’s immune system to recognize and kill malignant cells.
It’s a strategy that scientists have been working on for more than 15 years, but rallying the immune system to fight cancer has proved more difficult than most people expected. Designing a cancer vaccine requires a deep understanding of the immune system’s intricacies—knowledge that has come about only in the past few years. In addition, cancer cells can flip chemical switches to subvert attacks by the immune system, adding a layer of difficulty to vaccine design.