What is a cancer vaccine?
Cancer vaccines are a type of cancer immunotherapy. Scientists have been trying for many years to develop vaccines that could teach our immune system to fight cancer, in the same way that it fights an infection by germs.
Normally, we think of a vaccine as something that will prevent us getting a disease if we are exposed to it in the future; for example, children are vaccinated against diseases like measles and whooping cough.
With a cancer vaccine, the idea is to fight a disease (cancer) that is already present. Early attempts at cancer vaccines produced disappointing results when tested in patients. The immune system is very complicated, and the early cancer vaccines did not work in the way researchers hoped they would.
But new scientific techniques, and developments in our understanding of cancer and the immune system, have led to a new generation of these therapies. It is hoped these new treatments will overcome the problems seen with cancer vaccines in the past.
