Hope for cancer vaccine proves promise of research
By Lisa Jarvis / Bloomberg Opinion
A study published last month in Nature underscores the potential for a new personalized pancreatic cancer vaccine to keep the disease from coming back. The trial was tiny, just 16 patients, but it’s eliciting a sentiment not normally associated with this brutal disease: hope.
Pancreatic cancer is notorious for the swiftness with which is kills. So, when researchers offer data suggesting a personalized vaccine might be able to keep the cancer at bay for years, it’s worth paying attention to; even when the results are in just a handful of people.
It also should be a call to action. Progress has been too slow for this patient group and their families. They deserve better options. The only way to get there is to keep investing in the kind of foundational research that, through decades of painstaking work, becomes the basis for breakthroughs.
Even with slow and steady progress over the last decade toward improving survival rates, just 13 percent of people are alive five years after they are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. That poor prognosis has made it the third deadliest cancer in the U.S., behind lung and colon cancers.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-hope-for-cancer-vaccine-proves-promise-of-research/
Not if Bobby Brainworm has anything to say about it.
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