Cancer Vaccine may be a reality

Scientists believe they are close to developing a vaccine for cancer, and plan to begin trials later this year.

The vaccine has proved effective on mice - stopping the growth of all cancer tumours.

Professor Alan Kingsman, from Oxford Biomedica which has developed the vaccine. The vaccine is based on gene therapy and appears to wake up the body's immune system encouraging it to attack and kill cancer tumours.

Through gene therapy, the body's genes are taught to recognize cancer cells through a protein that only exists on the surface of tumours. This protein is called called telomerase. What the cancer vaccine seeks to do is get the body's immune system to destroy tumour cells, to see those tumour cells, recognize them as dangerous and destroy them in much the same way as it destroys viruses and bacteria when we get an infection.