The next big advance in cancer treatment could be a vaccine.

After decades of limited success, scientists say research has reached a turning point, with many predicting more vaccines will be out in five years.

These aren91裸聊视频檛 traditional vaccines that prevent disease, but shots to shrink tumors and stop cancer from coming back. Targets for these experimental treatments include breast and lung cancer, with gains reported this year for melanoma and .

91裸聊视频淲e91裸聊视频檙e getting something to work. Now we need to get it to work better,91裸聊视频� said Dr. James Gulley, who helps lead a center at the National Cancer Institute that develops immune therapies, including cancer treatment vaccines.

More than ever, scientists understand how cancer hides from the body91裸聊视频檚 immune system. Cancer vaccines, like other immunotherapies, boost the immune system to find and kill cancer cells. And some new ones use mRNA, which was developed for cancer but first used for COVID-19 vaccines.

For a vaccine to work, it needs to teach the immune system91裸聊视频檚 T cells to recognize cancer as dangerous, said Dr. Nora Disis of UW Medicine91裸聊视频檚 Cancer Vaccine Institute in Seattle. Once trained, T cells can travel anywhere in the body to hunt down danger.

91裸聊视频淚f you saw an activated T cell, it almost has feet,91裸聊视频� she said. 91裸聊视频淵ou can see it crawling through the blood vessel to get out into the tissues.91裸聊视频�

Patient volunteers are crucial to the research.

Kathleen Jade, 50, learned she had breast cancer in late February, just weeks before she and her husband were to depart Seattle for an around-the-world adventure. Instead of sailing their 46-foot boat, Shadowfax, through the Great Lakes toward the St. Lawrence Seaway, she was sitting on a hospital bed awaiting her third dose of an experimental vaccine. She91裸聊视频檚 getting the vaccine to see if it will shrink her tumor before surgery.

91裸聊视频淓ven if that chance is a little bit, I felt like it91裸聊视频檚 worth it,91裸聊视频� said Jade, who is also getting standard treatment.

Progress on treatment vaccines has been challenging. The first, Provenge, was approved in the U.S. in 2010 to treat prostate cancer that had spread. It requires processing a patient91裸聊视频檚 own immune cells in a lab and giving them back through IV. There are also treatment vaccines for early bladder cancer and advanced melanoma.

Early cancer vaccine research faltered as cancer outwitted and outlasted patients91裸聊视频� weak immune systems, said Olja Finn, a vaccine researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

91裸聊视频淎ll of these trials that failed allowed us to learn so much,91裸聊视频� Finn said.

As a result, she91裸聊视频檚 now focused on patients with earlier disease since the experimental vaccines didn91裸聊视频檛 help with more advanced patients. Her group is planning a vaccine study in women with a low-risk, noninvasive breast cancer called ductal carcinoma in situ.

More vaccines that prevent cancer may be ahead too. Decades-old hepatitis B vaccines prevent liver cancer and HPV vaccines, introduced in 2006, .

In Philadelphia, Dr. Susan Domchek, director of the Basser Center at Penn Medicine, is recruiting 28 healthy people with BRCA mutations for a vaccine test. Those mutations increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The idea is to kill very early abnormal cells, before they cause problems. She likens it to periodically weeding a garden or erasing a whiteboard.

Others are developing vaccines to prevent cancer in people with precancerous lung nodules and other inherited conditions that raise cancer risk.

91裸聊视频淰accines are probably the next big thing91裸聊视频� in the quest to reduce cancer deaths, said Dr. Steve Lipkin, a medical geneticist at New York91裸聊视频檚 Weill Cornell Medicine, who is leading one effort funded by the National Cancer Institute. 91裸聊视频淲e91裸聊视频檙e dedicating our lives to that.91裸聊视频�

People with the inherited condition Lynch syndrome have a 60% to 80% lifetime risk of developing cancer. Recruiting them for cancer vaccine trials has been remarkably easy, said Dr. Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who is leading two government-funded studies on vaccines for Lynch-related cancers.

91裸聊视频淧atients are jumping on this in a surprising and positive way,91裸聊视频� he said.

Drugmakers Moderna and Merck are jointly developing a personalized mRNA vaccine for patients with melanoma, with a large study to begin this year. The vaccines are customized to each patient, based on the numerous mutations in their cancer tissue. A vaccine personalized in this way can train the immune system to hunt for the cancer91裸聊视频檚 mutation fingerprint and kill those cells.

But such vaccines will be expensive.

91裸聊视频淵ou basically have to make every vaccine from scratch. If this wasn91裸聊视频檛 personalized, the vaccine could probably be made for pennies, just like the COVID vaccine,91裸聊视频� said Dr. Patrick Ott of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

The vaccines under development at UW Medicine are designed to work for many patients, not just a single patient. Tests are underway in early and advanced breast cancer, lung cancer and ovarian cancer. Some results may come as soon as next year.

Todd Pieper, 56, from suburban Seattle, is participating in testing for a vaccine intended to shrink lung cancer tumors. His cancer spread to his brain, but he91裸聊视频檚 hoping to live long enough to see his daughter graduate from nursing school next year.

91裸聊视频淚 have nothing to lose and everything to gain, either for me or for other people down the road,91裸聊视频� Pieper said of his decision to volunteer.

One of the first to receive the ovarian cancer vaccine in a safety study 11 years ago was Jamie Crase of nearby Mercer Island. Diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer when she was 34, Crase thought she would die young and had made a will that bequeathed a favorite necklace to her best friend. Now 50, she has no sign of cancer and she still wears the necklace.

She doesn91裸聊视频檛 know for sure if the vaccine helped, 91裸聊视频淏ut I91裸聊视频檓 still here.91裸聊视频�

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute91裸聊视频檚 Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Carla K. Johnson, The Associated Press

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