Patients won't get breast cancer jab 'for a decade'
A VACCINE that may protect women from developing breast cancer is unlikely to be available to patients for up to a decade, a cancer specialist warned yesterday.
Oncologist Brian Hennessy of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Drogheda in Co Louth made the warning after it was announced that American scientists had developed a vaccine that has prevented breast cancer from developing in mice.
The researchers -- whose findings are published in the journal, Nature Medicine -- are now planning to conduct trials of the drug in humans. But they said it could be some years before it was widely available.
Dr Hennessy yesterday welcomed the breakthrough and said it had been particularly difficult to develop a vaccine against breast cancer. The basis for this vaccine is that it targets a protein found in most breast tumours. So far, cancer experts are taking a cautious approach, pointing out that it is an early-stage study -- however, it offers major hope in tackling the disease which is diagnosed in over 2,000 women in Ireland annually, claiming around 650 lives.
The lead researcher, Vincent Tuohy, from the Cleveland Clinic Learner Research Institute, said: "We believe that this vaccine will some day be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines have prevented many childhood diseases.
"If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer."
Dr Hennessy pointed out that when clinical trials begin on women they will be targeted at women in their 40s upwards.
This will help to reach women in the years they are more likely to develop the disease, with the majority of cases emerging in post-menopausal women.
The vaccine is not applicable to other cancers. It will be five to 10 years before the vaccine can be assessed for safety and effectiveness as a way to stop the disease from developing in women. The drug makes the immune system attack a particular protein found in most breast cancer cells and the mammary tissues of breastfeeding women, so it will be most suitable for those who have completed their families.
"The frequency of women who breastfeed in their early 40s and above is very low, so we are looking at vaccinating women against the disease from this stage of life onwards," Dr Tuohy said.
For younger women with a heightened risk of breast cancer, the vaccine may be an option to consider instead of prophylactic mastectomy -- breast removal surgery to protect against breast cancer. In the study, genetically cancer-prone mice were vaccinated -- half with a vaccine containing a-lactalbumin and half with a vaccine that did not contain the antigen.
- Eilish O'Regan Health Correspondent
Irish Independent
