A ray of Hope with Vaccine research

[RandyW]

A NEW VACCINE: Beginning in 1999, an experimental vaccine for lung cancer was tested at the University of Miami in 19 patients, all of whom were out of options. Six responded and survived for several years. Four are still alive, having had no other treatment for this deadly disease. Now, 70 new patients will get a chance to try the vaccine. Luis E. Raez, M.D, co-chair of the Thoracic Oncology Group at the University of Miami, has been awarded a three-year, $300,000 Clinical Innovator Award from the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute -- funding which makes two new phase II clinical trials possible.

In one, patients who are not eligible for surgery but who respond well to chemotherapy will be treated with the vaccine. "Within four months," explains Raez, "Fifty percent of those patients with good outcomes from the chemo would relapse." The hope is the vaccine will delay or prevent that relapse. The second group will be made up of patients who have had their tumors surgically removed. "Naturally, that's a better setting for a vaccination," says Eckhard R. Podack, M.D., Ph.D., chairman of Microbiology and Immunology. He devised the vaccine. "When there is minimal disease or no detectable disease, the immune system will respond much better." Making enough of the vaccine, greatly taxes the resources of Dr. Podack's lab. It's a job that would be eased by an automated culture system, something the lab can't afford. But the work goes on. Dr's Podack and Raez are also about to begin a phase I trial on a different lung cancer vaccine called gp96.

This is a link FOr Clinical Trial Will be recruiting soon for this vaccine;

http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct/screen ... iting=true