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.

During clinical studies, the Virtual Cancer Patient Engine (VCP) was found to be 70 percent accurate in predicting individualized patient response to chemotherapy drugs. The significance of the ability of this new technology to make accurate predictions in cancer treatments that will work before treatment begins is a 40 to 45 percent better accuracy rate than is currently predicted by oncologists. VCP analyzes how chemotherapy drugs will affect the growth of the cancer, how the chemotherapy drugs will behave in the body and how the cancer cells will respond to the chemotherapy drugs using mathematical modeling and computerized simulation between biological, pathological and pharmacological processes of drug-patient interactions.

According to researcher Dr. Abhik Mukherjee, "Every cancer is slightly different and every patient will respond to treatment differently. We wanted to find a way to predict how patients would respond to a particular drug in order to limit their side effects and give them the best chance of beating their disease."

Rather than throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, as Katie Couric described current cancer treatments, this technology has the potential for creating individualized treatments specific to the patient and their cancer in determining what will work ahead of time without putting the patient through unnecessary treatments that will not work. To learn more, visit Optimata.

Each month, about 22,000 women log on to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) web site and answer seven questions to determine their risk of developing invasive breast cancer. The Gail Model, named for the NCI's chief biostatistician, Mitchell H. Gail, generates a five-year risk and a lifetime risk for each woman who answers each of these seven questions.

• Does the woman have a medical history of any breast cancer or of any ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) or lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS)? Note: This assessment tool cannot accurately predict risk for a woman who already has a medical history of breast cancer.
  
• What is the woman's age? Note: This tool only calculates risk for women ages 35 and older.
  
• What was the woman's age at the time of her first menstrual period?
  
• What was the woman's age at the time of her first live birth of a child?
  
• How many of the woman's first-degree relatives -- mother, sisters, daughters -- have had breast cancer?
  
• Has the woman ever had a breast biopsy? How many breast biopsies has the woman had? Has the woman had at least one breast biopsy with atypical hyperplasia?
• What is the woman's race/ethnicity?

A simple drop-down answer menu is provided for each question, and explanations for each question are available. Upon completion of the short survey, the Gail Model spits out a five-year breast cancer risk and a lifetime breast cancer risk with comparisons to the general population of women.

While this is only an assessment -- based on statistics that do not always take into account individual differences -- it is still a helpful tool. Because it's clear that women can minimize breast cancer risk with behavior changes and sometimes medication. And generating a personal rating on risk is a rating worth knowing. It's also worth knowing that this tool was designed for use by health professionals. If you are not a health professional, consider discussing your results with your doctor.

In a surprising discovery, 200 mutated genes linked to the development, growth and spread of breast and colon cancers have been identified by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists. This information might provide vital research into the future treatment for these cancers.

Other cancers can be studied using the methods these researchers, called the Hopkins gene hunters, used in discovering the 200 genetic mutations for breast and colon cancers.

"This gives us some understanding of why breast and colon cancers, and most likely other cancers as well, are very different diseases and develop through different processes. When we say this will drive cancer research for the next couple of decades, this is one of the reasons," states Kenneth Kinzler, Ph.D., professor of oncology and co-director of the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins. "Now researchers will study how these mutations occur in breast and colon cancers, perhaps searching for environmental agents or cellular processes that drive these changes."

To read more detail on this study and discovery, visit Genome Code Cracked for Breast and Colon Cancers. An MP3 file and XML for iPods has been provided so that you can listen to Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists discuss this research.