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Article: Cancer vaccines: training the immune system to fight cancer.(Cover Story)
- Article from:
- FDA Consumer
- Article date:
- September 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 U.S. Government Printing Office. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Vaccines traditionally have been used to prevent infectious diseases such as measles and the flu. But with cancer vaccines, the emphasis is on treatment, at least for now. The idea is to inject a preparation of inactivated cancer cells or proteins that are unique to cancer cells into a person who has cancer. The goal: to train the person's immune system to recognize the living cancer cells and attack them.
"The best settings are for treating people who have minimal disease or a high risk of recurrence," says Jeffrey Schlom, Ph.D., chief of the Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). "But at this time, most therapeutic ...