- A vaccine designed to treat breast cancer appeared to be safe in women with advanced disease and showed signs of actually slowing down tumors, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.
Dendreon Corporation, maker of the Provenge prostate cancer vaccine, calls the new vaccine Neuvenge. It targets a type of breast cancer called her2/neu-positive breast cancer, which affects between 20 percent and 30 percent of breast cancer patients.
Like Provenge, Neuvenge is made using immune cells from the cancer patient, so it is a tailor-made vaccine.
Dr. John Park of the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues tested it in 18 women with advanced her2/neu-positive breast cancer, whose cancer had spread despite treatment.
Writing in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers said the vaccine did not cause any serious side effects and appeared to help at least one patient.
"We saw a partial response, meaning a reduction in the size of tumor area in one patient that was certainly attributable to the treatment," Park said in a telephone interview.
In three other women, their cancer appeared to stabilize for as long as a year, something that could have been due to treatment, Park said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070817/sc_nm/cancer_breast_neuvenge_dcOkay, the Phase I study was a small group and it only helped a small amount. And its years away from large scale use (as phase 2 will take a long time with much more safety and efficacy testing will be done) so there is that. However anything that may reduce the need or eliminate altogether the need for chemotherapy is a very good thing. If nothing else this treatment can possibly extend the lives of patients with this horrible disease...
Park said the effects justify moving from the Phase 1 safety trial to a Phase 2 trial, which would be designed to show the treatment actually helps patients. But that may not happen for a while, he said.
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