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DUKE RESEARCHERS STUDY CANCER VACCINE FOR BREAST CANCER | RALEIGH NEWS &
OBSERVER

Friday, July 1, 2022

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SCITECH


DUKE RESEARCHERS’ VACCINE FOR METASTATIC BREAST CANCER MOVES TO CLINICAL TRIALS

By Teddy Rosenbluth

Updated June 26, 2022 2:02 PM
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Sandra Hartman has endured an onerous course of treatments for her stage four
breast cancer — six months of chemotherapy, a mixture of pills and infusions
that required her to get a tube implanted under her skin, giving doctors
perpetual access to her veins.

Comparatively, her most recent treatment venture was comically easy.

“You just go in and it’s just a shot,” she said. “You get side effects from most
cancer drugs, but I didn’t get any side effects from the vaccine.”



Hartman was one of the first participants in an ongoing clinical trial out of
Duke University Medical Center that is testing the efficacy of a breast cancer
vaccine that uses mRNA, pieces of genetic material that tell the body how to
make proteins. Unlike many existing treatments for metastatic breast cancer that
indiscriminately kill cancer and non-cancer cells alike, the vaccine expertly
identifies cancer and teaches the immune system to fight it.

Zachary Hartman, a Duke researcher involved with the trial who is also Sandra’s
son, said oncology has long relied on a brute force approach to rid the body of
cancer. During chemotherapy, for example, the body is flooded with poison with
the hopes that rapidly dividing cancer cells will die off before the rest of
them do.



“That’s sort of been the backbone for oncology for 50 years,” he said.

The vaccine’s specificity could both make treatments more effective at keeping
the body cancer-free and reduce side effects.

“I think we can all envision a world where these kinds of approaches would be
more effective and have less side effects than chemotherapy,” he said.

His lab developed a vaccine for women who have tested positive for HER2
proteins, which are present in about a fifth of women with breast cancer.

He said he thinks the vaccine could eventually be used in conjunction with other
treatments to prolong life expectancy and prevent the cancer from developing
resistance. Only about a fourth of women will survive five or more years after a
stage 4 breast cancer diagnosis.



On the surface of Sandra’s cancer cells, there are hundreds of thousands of HER2
proteins that tell her cancer to rapidly grow. These proteins make the cancer
particularly aggressive — but they also provide a landmark that medications can
use to identify which cells are cancerous.

The cancer vaccine creates copies of the HER2 proteins and itself to teach the
immune system it should view those proteins as a threat.

“It’s like you’re teaching your immune system to fight off the cancer and that’s
really the best chance, I think, of eliminating it for good,” he said. “You root
it out everywhere and then you have this active surveillance system within your
body to keep it in check.”

Studies have shown the vaccine to be effective at killing breast cancer cells in
mice, but it’s too early in clinical trials to know how effective the treatment
will be in humans.

About half of the participants will receive the vaccine alone while the other
half will receive it in conjunction with an antibody drug that bolsters the
immune reaction to cancer cells.



Though it’s still early in the clinical trials, Hartman said the side effects
from this vaccine have been negligible compared to other treatment options.

“They’re way safer than a lot of cancer drugs,” he said. “It’s kind of like the
side effects from a COVID vaccine — maybe you feel a little fatigued the next
day or you get a fever.”

There is still a long way to go before the vaccine is approved for clinical use.
Researchers would still have to show extensive evidence that the vaccine is
effective and safe through at least one more clinical trial. In order for the
vaccines to be used as a first defense against metastatic breast cancer, even
more rigorous trials would need to be conducted to show that it is more
effective than existing treatments like chemotherapy.

This story was originally published June 22, 2022 5:45 AM.




TEDDY ROSENBLUTH

twitter email phone 919-829-4569
Teddy Rosenbluth covers science for The News & Observer in a position funded by
Duke Health and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. She has covered science and health
care for Los Angeles Magazine, the Santa Monica Daily Press, and the Concord
Monitor. Her investigative reporting has brought her everywhere from the streets
of Los Angeles to the hospitals of New Delhi. She graduated from UCLA with a
bachelor’s degree in psychobiology.




READ NEXT


SCITECH


GENETIC RESEARCH HAS A SERIOUS DIVERSITY PROBLEM, NEW STUDY FROM UNC FINDS

By Teddy Rosenbluth

July 01, 2022 5:30 AM
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87% of experiments UNC researchers analyzed exclusively used “European” genetic
samples. So any medical treatments they produce may not work for people of other
races.

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