Sort of, I'd hesitate to use the term vaccine, though it functions a bit like an active vaccine. Remember cancer isn't one disease, every individual person with cancer basically has their own unique version of cancer, though the pathology generally falls along "only" a few thousand discrete pathways.
Basically many non-small-cell lung cancers (and some similar cancers in other organs) overexpress Epidermal Growth Factor Receptors (EGF is a factor in saliva and other mucosal areas that aids healing of wounds and ulcers) in order to grow rapidly. The vaccine trains the immune system to attack its own EGF (this is not a great thing but is a hell of a lot better than lung cancer) which starves the EGFR on cancer cells of it and prevents them from proliferating.
So it doesn't "cure" cancer, only works on maybe 65-80% of cancers of the lung (so the majority of ones it targets), doesn't kill it, just stops it, is way more effective on early stage cancers and neoplasms, and while it works as a preventative I'd personally hold off on the getting stomach ulcers.
It's still one of the most amazing cancer breakthroughs of all time.
Didn't they also make a vaccine for lung cancer?
Sort of, I'd hesitate to use the term vaccine, though it functions a bit like an active vaccine. Remember cancer isn't one disease, every individual person with cancer basically has their own unique version of cancer, though the pathology generally falls along "only" a few thousand discrete pathways.
Basically many non-small-cell lung cancers (and some similar cancers in other organs) overexpress Epidermal Growth Factor Receptors (EGF is a factor in saliva and other mucosal areas that aids healing of wounds and ulcers) in order to grow rapidly. The vaccine trains the immune system to attack its own EGF (this is not a great thing but is a hell of a lot better than lung cancer) which starves the EGFR on cancer cells of it and prevents them from proliferating.
So it doesn't "cure" cancer, only works on maybe 65-80% of cancers of the lung (so the majority of ones it targets), doesn't kill it, just stops it, is way more effective on early stage cancers and neoplasms, and while it works as a preventative I'd personally hold off on the getting stomach ulcers.
It's still one of the most amazing cancer breakthroughs of all time.