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Breast-Cancer-Vaccination Helps with Survival!

Vaccination against the tumor feature HER2/neu could improve the survival rate of patients with breast cancer, according to the preliminary conclusion of a study conducted by Linda Benavides and their employees from San Antonio, Texas. The American scientist now presented the results of their studies with the experimental vaccine NeuVax (E75), in which a total of 163 patients participated, at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research^[1].
Especially the group of patients in which only a low expression of HER2 is present in the tumor (“low expressors”), seems to profit from the vaccination. After succesful first line treatment of breast cancer with conventional chemotherapy a relapse of the disease could be greatly reduced through vaccination – only 8% of the vaccinated patients got a relapse, while the recurrence rate in the non-vaccinated patients was 21%. The vaccine appears to have a positive effect on the overall survival as well; while all vaccinated patients from the group of “low expressors” are still live, unfortunately 20% of patients in the control group succumbed to to their illness.
Interestingly, especially patients for whom treatment with the monoclonal HER2/neu-Antibody Mabthera is not applicable, might benefit from this new form of therapy.

Due to the small numbers of patients in this preliminary study there are still no definitive conclusions. We may be very excited about the results of the impact studies, on which about 700 to 1000 patients will participate.

(semi-automated translation thanks to google.com)

Literature & Sources