Vaccine for Breast Cancer Set to Be a 'Shot in the Arm'

Today, there are vaccines for a host of diseases, including polio, smallpox, and chicken pox.  Administering these vaccines is also as simple and effective as literally giving the patient “a shot in the arm.”  In this new era of vaccine development, researchers at a New Jersey-based biotechnology company, Advaxis, Inc., are working on a suite of new vaccines to treat women with different types of cancers, including breast cancer.

Yvonne Paterson, Ph.D., the scientific founder of Advaxis as well as a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, and her team, have already taken a giant step in the development of a series of cancer-fighting vaccines.  Central to the team’s discovery is the microbe Listeria monocytogenes, a bacterium found in dairy products. Dr. Paterson built upon the well known fact that when Listeria is introduced into the body, it has an extremely powerful, direct stimulatory effect on the activities of immune killer T cells. 

By modifying Listeria to deliver cancer antigens, Dr. Paterson was able to direct this response to kill cancer cells.  These modified-Listeria vaccines harness the power of the immune system to mount an attack against the Listeria and at the same time, redirect the immune system to also attack the cancer cells.  In early studies, Dr. Paterson used the Listeria bacterium to deliver the tumor-associated protein HER-2/Neu to immune cells. HER-2/Neu is over expressed in 20 to 40 percent of all breast cancers. These cells eventually enlist killer T cells to seek out and destroy the tumor cells that over-express the HER-2/Neu molecule.