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.

Gleevec is proving over time to be such a promising breakthrough in successfully treating leukemia patients that even with the discovery that it can cause congestive heart failure researchers are still telling cancer patients not to stop taking the drug.

Dr. Thomas Force, of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, the study's author, said that this is not a case of Vioxx and while ten patients taking Gleevec for chronic myelogenous leukemia developed severe congestive heart failure, the take away message of the study is that doctors need to be aware that cancer drugs like Gleevec can have severe effects on the heart and the heart health of patients taking Gleevec needs to be closely monitored.

Young women sometimes are dismissed when they pursue medical attention for suspicious lumps, bumps, pains, or changes in their breasts -- because breast cancer is not so common in young women and medical professionals may assume that breast cancer is not the culprit for the complaints brought before them by young women. But young women do get breast cancer -- I did at age 34 -- and many times, the tumors found in young breasts are more aggressive than those that appear for older women. So it is critical that young women seek medical attention for anything out-of-the-ordinary. And it is critical that doctors respond with urgency so that breast cancer in young women can be detected early -- and treated appropriately.

As we begin to see cancer vaccines come to market meant to prevent cancer, drug makers such as GlaxoSmithKline are experimenting with cancer vaccines for patients already diagnosed with cancer. One experimental vaccine, MAGE-3, is showing some promise in clinical trials to prevent a recurrence of lung cancer is set to enter Phase III clinical trials early next year.

According to GlaxoSmithKline, the liver cancer vaccine designed to help liver cancer patients from experiencing a recurrence of their cancer, is based on priming the immune system to attack tumors. Called a therapeutic vaccine, the drug maker is optimistic they are onto something that might prove to have a significant benefit to lung cancer patients and estimate the vaccine might be available in a couple of years.

GlaxoSmithKline announced it has received positive data from an interim analysis of its Phase III trial of Tykerb in advanced breast cancer, and as such, ended enrollment for the trial after it found Tykerb in combination with Xeloda delayed the time to disease progression by more than 50 percent, compared to Xeloda alone.

None of the breast cancer patients in the trial had responded to Herceptin or other drugs.

“We are extremely encouraged by this data which suggest that Tykerb may offer significant benefit as an oral medication in combination with chemotherapy for patients with advanced or metastatic breast cancer, and whose disease has progressed on previous treatment regimens, including Herceptin,” said Paolo Paoletti, M.D., Senior Vice President of the Oncology Medicine Development Center at GlaxoSmithKline.

At this time, Tykerb is an experimental drug that does not have regulatory approval in any country for any use outside of clinical trials. GlaxoSmithKline plans to file marketing applications for Tykerb with the Food and Drug Administration and European regulators in the second half of the year.