A breast cancer vaccine? Reality or hype?

June 2, 2010

Several news outlets have been reporting this week on the development of a vaccine to prevent breast cancer.  Unfortunately, the science hasn't advanced as far as the hype.  The research is interesting and hypothesis-generating, but it is a long way from a vaccine for humans.  The research, published online in Nature Medicine involved small numbers of mice.  This is pre-clinical, preliminary, laboratory research.  Much more work will be needed before we know if this is a viable approach for humans.

The researchers, from the Cleveland Clinic and the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, tested alpha-lactalbumin as a vaccination target in mouse models of breast cancer.  Some previous studies, though not all, have shown that alpha-lactalbumin is produced by the majority of breast tumors.  It is not produced in large amounts in normal breast tissue, except during lactation.  However, the researchers do not yet have any data from humans to show that the vaccine would not cause a reaction against normal breast tissue.  The researchers found that immunoreactivity against alpha-lactalbumin did prevent all six vaccinated breast cancer prone mice from developing breast cancer, compared with the six non-vaccinated mice who all developed breast cancer.  Furthermore, they found that immunoreactivity had some therapeutic effect in shrinking existing tumors in experiments on additional mice.

The results are promising, but the studies were very small and pre-clinical.  There has been no research yet with humans to determine the safety or efficacy of creating immunoreactivity against alpha-lactalbumin.  Much more work will be needed before we know if this approach warrants further research in human clinical trials.