We're A Step Closer To A Vaccine Against Cancer

A TREATMENT that could “change the landscape” of cancer medicine is being trialed on terminally ill patients and has been hailed as the first step towards having effective vaccines to fight the disease.

- Lucy Johnston

The first jab has already been given and trials of the new technology are short to be widened to four NHS hospitals.

The treatment is designed to boost the body’s immune system to identify and destroy cancer cells.

Medics have expressed excitement for the vaccination, which they describe as a potential “game-changer for cancer medicine”.

Earlier this month, Sezgin Hick, a 61-year-old mother of two from Teddington, south-west London, was given the first of three fortnightly jabs to shrink her tumors, which had spread from her ovary into her lymph nodes and abdomen.

This was despite almost eight years of chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments. She is the first of 36 critically ill patients who will be recruited into the vaccine trial, which experts say could eventually include people with a wide range of cancer types.

Ms Hick, a former intensive care nurse, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2012, has been told the new vaccine is now the only treatment available to her as all others have failed to work.