Cleveland Clinic will conduct a clinical trial for a breast cancer vaccine by spring 2021, reports Cleveland's Fox 8 News.
The FDA recently approved an investigational new drug application for the vaccine, which permits Cleveland Clinic and partner Anixa Biosciences to start human trials. Anixa Biosciences is a San Jose, Calif.-based biotech company that has exclusive worldwide rights to the vaccine.
Cleveland Clinic immunologist Vincent Tuohy, PhD, and his team invented the vaccine, which immunizes against a protein expressed in women's mammary glands when they develop breast cancer.
The researchers will initially focus on using the vaccine for triple-negative breast cancer, the most deadly type. However, researchers said they hope to eventually use the vaccine technology to prevent other forms of cancer.
"We envision a 21st century vaccine program here at the Cleveland Clinic that prevents diseases that we confront with age that we think are completely preventable," Dr. Tuohy told Fox 8 News. "We think breast cancer, ovarian cancer, perhaps prostate cancer, are all preventable diseases, and that's why we want to bring our vaccine program up to the 21st century."