Experimental breast cancer vaccine proves to be safe in first clinical trials

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer and it’s leading the cause of cancer deaths for Malaysian women.

With 8,418 new cases reported annually and 23 new cases every day, breast cancer affects one in every twenty Malaysian women throughout the course of their lifetime.

Sadly, compared to many high-income nations where, according to the Malaysian Study on Cancer Survival in 2018, nine out of ten women survive the disease, only seven out of ten Malaysian breast cancer patients survive for at least five years.

But a breast cancer vaccine can change this.

Over the last two decades, researchers from the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle have been working on a breast cancer vaccine. In a recent study published in the journal JAMA Oncology, they revealed the results of phase one human trials of the breast cancer vaccine.

The goal of the phase one trial was to assess the vaccine's safety and determine if it elicited an immunological response against the protein known as human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2).

The experimental breast cancer vaccine has shown to be both extremely safe and successful during phase one trials in halting the growth of HER2 cancer tumor cells.

The most advanced, aggressive, and quickly spreading kind of breast cancer in women is brought on by high amounts of the HER2 protein in the body. As a result, the new vaccination may prove to be a game-changing invention in the realm of contemporary medicine.

Phase two trials for the vaccine are currently being carried out by researchers.

“The results showed that the vaccine was very safe. In fact, the most common side effects that we saw in about half the patients were very similar to what you see with Covid-19 vaccines: redness and swelling at the injection site and maybe some fever, chills, and flu-like symptoms," Dsis explained in an article by TRT World.

Additionally, the vaccination successfully induced the anticipated cytotoxic immune response without resulting in serious adverse effects, with the highest immune response manifesting in patients who received the medium dose.

The researchers say that the vaccine has improved the life expectancy of the trial participants.

"About half of whom would be expected to die within five years of treatment - we've now followed these women for ten years and 80 per cent of them are still alive," said Disis.