There's been much press lately about the cervical cancer vaccine, its merits, its implications, and the debate surrounding the issue of vaccinating young girls against the sexually transmitted virus HPV.Enter a new vaccine -- the ovarian cancer vaccine.
Early clinical trial results are promising for this vaccine, intended to fight off ovarian cancer tumors with patients' own cells -- but without the toxicity of traditional chemotherapy.
Says Dr. Ed Staren of Cancer Treatment Centers of America, "We're able to identify the specific components of the tumor and target it for individual therapy for the patient."
Doctors would surgically remove a patient's tumor and then send it to a lab where tumor cells would be used to create a vaccine specifically for the patient.
A second round of clinical trials to study the effectiveness of this vaccine will begin this summer.
