Can a vaccine treat cancer?
That’s the question behind new clinical tests, soon to begin at Buffalo’s Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
The medicine in question is not your average vaccine: Each dose is customized for each cancer patient.
Researchers will draw healthy cells from each study participant, attach a specialized protein in a sterile lab environment and then inject the mixture, now known as a dendritic cell vaccine, back into the body.
“You can see that these cells now come back. They have memory. They’re able to remember that cancer cells are bad. They need to be destroyed. They need to be killed,” says Kunle Odunsi, chair of the Department of Gynecologic Oncology.
