Technology

While you are right in principle, what you are quoting is exactly what I was talking about. The cancer that was introduced to those mice was known beforehand and the vaccine adapted to it. Similar treatments have been available for melanoma for a few years. It’s actually insane considering how much of a death sentence skin cancer was when I was in med school 12 years ago.

However this is a case of similar antigens in different cancers. This is sadly not the norm. While this might have some effect in this very controlled experiment, a general vaccine is unlikely. We might be able to get immunization for specific cancer subtypes, what is nor likely though, is that we do molecular testing on a tumor and then apply targeted therapy as a vaccine.

We have a molecular tumor conference at our university where we apply exactly these principles. It’s a very exciting time and I see my future as a oncological surgeon somewhat endangered, however this type of treatment will still need decades to be brought to mainstream and most likely be extremely expensive in the beginning

Edit: I reread the whole article after my reply, it was not a case of cross tumor antigens, it was two different vehicles for different cancers, one melanoma, one colonic cancer. So no vaccine in the typical sense