Mission Moment: Cancer Vaccines

Cancer vaccines – new hope for the future, and the future is now!

Our immune systems are designed to recognize "self" versus "foreign" so that they can attack cells that are made foreign by viral or bacterial infection. Unfortunately, cancer cells develop tricks to evade immune attack, and anti-cancer treatments can seriously damage normal immune cells as well as cancer cells, allowing life-threatening infections to occur in many patients, especially those treated with high-dose therapies.

So, researchers are learning how to strengthen immune responses to improve clinical outcomes for cancer patients, by fighting infections and fighting cancer too. These new treatments are called "immunotherapies" and include vaccines.

Of course, vaccines have long been used to prevent potentially life-threatening infections like cholera, measles, polio and flu. Now, vaccines are being developed to help cancer patients by stimulating a patient's immune system to better recognize and attack foreign molecules on cancer cells. Especially good progress is being made in developing therapeutic vaccines for lymphoma, myeloma and leukemia patients. The Society is currently investing almost $24 million in sixteen investigations at the forefront of vaccine research.

As with so many advances in blood cancer research, the vaccine strategies that are proven effective for our patients are likely to help other cancer patients too. The foreign molecules will be different, but the basic principles will be the same.

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