A vaccine to prevent breast cancer? Not just yet

Last week, the virus, the vaccine this week. So we really on the verge of a revolutionary vaccine "could" put an end to breast cancer - as some media have said?

No, not yet, anyway.

The securities in question has been raised by an article in Nature Medicine, American researchers have described a series of experiments were conducted with mice specially bred.

No human study has not yet materialized, and there is reason to believe that researchers have adopted the approach would have been difficult to deal with women.

The U.S. team focused on a protein that appears to be found only in rapidly dividing cells of the breast, called alpha-lactalbumin. Scientists have thought that this protein, which is often present in high concentrations in breast cancer cells, would be a good way to deal with "target" of breast cancer.

One way to do this, they speculated, was one of alpha-lactalbumin to use as a vaccine for the first cell of the immune system to attack cancer in the same way as doctors use fragments viruses and bacteria to protect against diseases like measles and tuberculosis.

To begin to test their theory was correct, they did what all scientists when they came across an exciting new idea tested in a model system. In this case, the team used mice that are genetically predisposed to develop breast cancer - these tests to determine whether an idea is worth pursuing.

The document (which is excellent is explained in detail on the choice of the NHS "Behind the" Site News), researchers have shown that immunization with a handful of these at-risk tumors of mice with alpha-lactalbumin is in fact the speed at which then developed breast cancer cases in the lower - suggesting perhaps that their idea was good.

They also showed, in another group of mice, the vaccine prevented human cells of breast cancer develop.

As we are often on this blog, this is only the beginning of the story, instead of the end.

None of the "model" is primarily a woman with breast cancer. The effects of the "switch" of the immune system of a woman for a protein in breast tissue of the group are completely unknown and difficult to guess.

And, most importantly, the vaccine seems to have problems in mice results in the production of milk - so the use of this approach can be problematic for pregnant women or nursing mothers should never be attempted in humans. There is a huge amount of research for this initial work forward, and no guarantee of success.

In fact, there is no vaccine against cancer has successfully developed so far. The famous "vaccine against cancer of the cervix" is not really a vaccine against cancer in this way - it protects against a virus, HPV, which can lead to cancer in some women, these researchers are very territory familiar ..

So we have a series of titles promising progress has not to our success in another species - are honest, most of the articles mentioned that the actual work was done in mice.

However, anyone with an eye on the media recently could be forgiven for thinking that the cancer was "cured" when, as discussed too often, usually on the first day, and needs much more work to do.

And, as Martin pointed out yesterday, the heads can - and must - cause of the alarm, care and, perhaps worst of all, false hopes among those who read them.