Opinion: Making Cancer Vaccines Work
Armed with the right adjuvant system, vaccines are poised to tackle one of the world’s most intractable diseases.
Electron micrograph of HPVWIKIMEDIA, NIH
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More than four decades and billions of dollars since President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer, the disease is still the second most common cause of death in the U.S. According to American Cancer Society, nearly 600,000 Americans are expected to die of cancer in 2015, while more than 1.6 million new cancer cases are estimated to be diagnosed. Although we have learned much about the disease and improved outcomes for many patients, we are still relying on surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation to treat cancer, just as we did four decades ago. But, as widespread sequencing of tumors has revealed, no two cancers are identical, limiting the effectiveness of such homogenous
One force partially equipped to address this magnitude of cancer diversity is the immune system, which constantly patrols the body for deadly foreign invaders such as pathogens and abnormal cells. Immunotherapy approaches—and specifically, cancer vaccines—harness and enhance the immune system’s ability to recognize and eliminate tumor cells.
