BioCentury
ARTICLE | Cover Story

Breast cancer prophylaxis

June 17, 2010 7:00 AM UTC

Although the recent FDA approval of Dendreon Corp.'s Provenge therapeutic vaccine for prostate cancer finally has cemented immunotherapy's place in the cancer armamentarium, the development of prophylactic cancer vaccines has lagged far behind. One reason is that immunization with tumor antigens, which are derived from self-antigens, can lead to autoimmune responses that damage normal tissues-a risk that might be acceptable to cancer patients receiving a therapeutic vaccine but unacceptable to healthy individuals receiving a prophylactic one.

Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland State University think they have side-stepped this problem by showing that a vaccine based on a-lactalbumin (LALBA) safely protected mice from breast cancer.1 Now comprehensive studies are needed to determine LALBA's expression in human breast tumors and the vaccine's potential effects during and after pregnancy...