Investigational Preventive Breast Cancer Vaccine Shows Promise in Initial Trial

Researchers at Cleveland Clinic are presenting “updated findings from their novel study of a vaccine aimed at preventing triple-negative breast cancer.”

The investigational vaccine being tested was “generally well tolerated and produced an immune response in most patients.” The ongoing clinical trial was begun in 2021, and the patients involved were split into three cohorts: those who completed treatment for early-stage, triple-negative breast cancer but are at high risk for recurrence; those who are cancer-free but at high risk for developing breast cancer; and early-stage triple-negative breast cancer patients with residual cancer in the breast tissue.

A phase 2 study is expected to begin in 2025. G. Thomas Budd, the principal investigator of the phase 1 study, said that the hope is that this vaccine can be a “true preventive vaccine…administered to patients who are cancer-free.” Triple-negative breast cancer accounts for a “disproportionately higher percentage of breast cancer deaths,” and it is “twice as likely to occur in Black women.”

This vaccine “targets a lactation protein, α-lactalbumin, which is no longer found after lactation in normal, aging breast tissues but is present in most triple-negative breast cancers. If breast cancer develops, the vaccine is designed to prompt the immune system to attack the tumor and keep it from growing.”