With the rapid increasing numbers of Patients suffering from breast cancer, it appears that we may have a new weapon against it.
Dr. Vincent Tuohy, leading a research group the Cleveland clinc says that they have developed a new Vaccine that has the potential to actually halt the progress of the disease as well as prevent any onset of it occurring in the future.
The vaccine is only in preliminary tests, but the effects of this could be a life saver. The vaccine was designed to train the immune system to search for and destroy a certain type of protein that is only found in breast cancer infected cells. If this works, we could add breast cancer to the list of diseases that are preventable with a shot in the arm. This vaccine has the possibility to become as famous and well used as the polio vaccinations and I think that it may eventually become standard sets of shots.
But, again, this is only in preliminary testing, and there are many more tests to be done before this can even come close to confirmation, but Tuohy is hopeful, and seemingly certain that the next batch of tests will pass.
The preliminary test was done by selectively breeding a set of 12 mice that were prone to breast cancer, they were split into two groups, one got the injections, and the other one did not. The results showed that the ones that did not receive the injections all got cancer. The ones that did get it, none of them got cancer.
This test alone is not conclusive, but it does give at the very least a new idea on how to fight it.
The Vaccine is scheduled to undergo clinical testing soon, and if it passes it will become a recommended vaccination for women over 40 as that is the time that they are the least likely to be breast feeding, and the most likely to get cancer.
The down side of this, and the reason they want to avoid breast feeding mothers, is that the protein that the vaccine targets specific proteins that are also linked to lactation. So with this, the milk supply may be adversely affected.
Luckily, this protein is not located anywhere else in the breast so it can attack only the cancer cells with that protein and leave the healthy non cancerous cells alone.
I looked, but I was unable to find if the cancer holds this protein in male cases of breast cancer, but if it does, and this does stop it entirely, then we could not only be closer to complete prevention, but we could be close to a cure as well.
For links to other articles I've written
http://rlwoodsiii.blogspot.com/for the original article and video segment
http://www.fox8.com/news/wjw-breast-canc...