Maryland Doctor Develops Vaccine That Could Fight Cancer
9/30/2006 Baltimore, MD staff www.nbc4.com A Maryland doctor has helped develop a vaccine that could one day help in the fight against certain types of cancer. The vaccine, which is being tested now, is designed to target cancers of the head and neck. Doctor Scott Strome at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore helped develop the so-called Trojan peptide vaccines. "It's given as a shot, with a couple of other drugs that are designed to turn on the immune system," said Strome. The vaccines are made of specialized peptides, which are pieces of protiens found in certain cancer cells. The idea is that when they are injected, they will rev up the patients immune cells. Those cells will then seek out the peptides in the cancer cells and kill them. Strome likens it to a Trojan horse being used in a surprise attack. "We use it to kind of sneak into the cell," said Strome. "It kind of fakes out the body's immune system to turn on against a protein that we optimistically think will be on the tumor cell itself." The survival rate of head and neck cancers is about 50 percent and it's been that way for about 30 years. Doctor Strome thinks if the vaccine is effective it may change that. "We treat the cancer and then potentially we can give an adjuvant vaccine, to boost the immune system to make sure it doesn't come back," he said. The human trials of the vaccine [...]