Breast Cancer Vaccine Shows Promising Results

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(CBS)  A vaccine to prevent breast cancer has shown overwhelmingly favorable results in animals, according to a study by researchers at Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute.

They found that a single vaccination with the antigen a-lactalbumin prevents breast cancer tumors from forming in mice, while inhibiting the growth of existing tumors.

Human trials could begin within a year.

If successful, it would be the first vaccine to prevent breast cancer, reports CBS Cleveland affiliate WOIO.

"We believe this vaccine will someday be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines prevent polio and measles in children," Vincent Tuohy, Ph.D., the study's principal investigator and an immunologist at the Lerner Institute, told WOIO..

"If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer," he added.

CBS News