Breast Cancer Vaccine Technology Readies For Human Study

A San Jose California based biotechnology company announced that its prophylactic breast cancer vaccine is making progress towards clinical trials.

Anixa Biosciences and Cleveland Clinic announced on July 28, 2020, they intend to file the Investigational New Drug (IND) Application with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by the end of the current quarter.

This vaccine technology was invented by a research team from Cleveland Clinic, led by Dr. Vincent Tuohy. This innovative technology takes advantage of self-proteins that have a function at certain times in life, but then become "retired" and disappear from the body. 

One such protein, alpha-lactalbumin, is expressed only in the mammary glands during lactation and then disappears once lactation ceases. 

Dr. Tuohy discovered that this protein is abnormally expressed again when a woman contracts breast cancer, especially Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC), the most deadly form of this disease. 

Dr. Tuohy postulated that if women could be immunized against this protein, after the age of childbirth, the immune system could be trained to destroy the cancer cells as they arise, thus making it difficult for cancer to gain critical mass. Early studies to test this theory demonstrated highly significant prevention of breast cancer in animal models.

Dr. Amit Kumar, President, and CEO of Anixa stated in a press statement: "After completion of the IND, it will be reviewed by our regulatory experts and committees and then filed with the FDA.”

“We have already had 2 pre-IND meetings with the FDA as this is a novel vaccine technology."

Anixa is a publicly-traded biotechnology company developing a number of programs addressing cancer and infectious disease. 

Breast cancer vaccine development news is published by Vax-Before-Cancer.