Cleveland Clinic researchers in partnership with Anixa Biosciences, Inc began the next step in a study of a vaccine for preventing triple-negative breast cancer, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. The new study will include up to 12 patients cancer-free individuals at high risk for developing breast cancer. They will receive three vaccinations and will be monitored. The immune response but also the side effects will be observed. “Triple-negative breast cancer (representing about 12% to 15% of all breast cancers) is the form of the disease for which we have the least effective treatments,” said G. Thomas Budd, M.D. of Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute.
The vaccine is based on pre-clinical research led by the late Vincent Tuohy, Ph.D., who was the Mort and Iris November Distinguished Chair in Innovative Breast Cancer Research at Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute. “Long term, we are hoping that this can be a true preventive vaccine that would be administered to cancer-free individuals to prevent them from developing this highly aggressive disease,” said Dr Budd. The vaccine is designed to cue a person’s immune system to attack a tumor and keep it from growing if it does develop. Researchers expect to have results from this early phase of research by the end of 2023.
