‘Death is not the worst that can happen to men.’ –Plato
After four decades of largely unfulfilled hopes—Dec. 23 marks 40 years since President Nixon declared war on cancer—scientists have hit on a potential cure that few thought possible a few years ago: vaccines. If they succeed, cancer vaccines would revolutionize treatment. They could spell the end of chemotherapy and radiation, which can have horrific side effects, which tumor cells often become resistant to, and which often make so little difference it would be laughable were it not so tragic: last week, for instance, headlines touted two new drugs for metastatic breast cancer even though studies failed to show that they extend survival by a single day. Vaccines could make such “advances” a thing of the past. And they could make cancer as preventable, with a few jabs, as measles.
“Could” is the key word. Cancer vaccines are still being tested. Patients, doctors, and scientists know only too well that seemingly wondrous cancer therapies can flame out. But progress is accelerating. In 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first-ever tumor vaccine, called Provenge, to treat prostate cancer. Scores of other vaccines are in the pipeline. Over the summer, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania unveiled what they call a cancer “breakthrough 20 years in the making”: a vaccine against chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) that has brought about remissions of up to a year and counting—and which its inventors believe can be tweaked to attack lung cancer, ovarian cancer, myeloma, and melanoma. Vaccines against pancreatic and brain cancer are also being tested. “For the first time,” says Disis, who has a $7.9 million grant from the Pentagon to develop a preventive vaccine, “clinical trials [of cancer vaccines] are demonstrating anti-tumor efficacy in numbers of patients with cancer, not just one or two unique individuals.”
