The Future

Personalized Vaccines for Cancer

Cancer treatments are becoming more and more personalized, from the genetic typing of your cancer to vaccines created using patient-specific cells.

Shawna Kraft, Pharm.D., author

Vaccines work by providing the body an example of what it should fight. Many vaccines already exist for viruses, bacteria, disease and other foreign substances. If the body becomes infected, the vaccine makes it "remember" to kill the substance.

This technique, a very exciting area of research, is being explored for cancer.

One example of personalized vaccines is the medication sipuleucel-T (Provenge) for prostate cancer. Vaccines are also being studied in other cancer types, such as brain cancer and melanoma. The general idea is to remove cancer cells from a patient and create a vaccine in a lab using the patient-specific cells. It is given back to the patient to generate memory cells that attack cancer in their body.

Personalized vaccines will likely work well in cancers where immunotherapy tends to be effective, such as melanoma. Unlike chemotherapy, which works by weakening a patient's immune system, vaccines stimulate the immune system by helping it recognize what is foreign.

Expect to see more news on vaccines as a part of personalized cancer treatment in the future.