• News

"Vaccine Helps Body’s Immune System Recognize, Kill Cancer Cells"

  • CBS New York
  • New York, NY
  • (June 17, 2019)

There’s an exciting development in cancer vaccines. The vaccines aren’t meant to prevent cancer, but instead turn on the immune system to kill cancer that’s already there. Sergei German developed lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells of the immune system, and was enrolled in a published clinical trial. “Low-grade lymphomas, ironically, they don’t hurt you as quickly, but we don’t have a cure for them,” said Joshua Brody, MD, director of the Lymphoma Immunotherapy Program at The Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “That’s really our purpose, to develop cures for low-grade lymphomas.” To develop a cure, Dr. Brody has worked out a way to make a vaccine that will help the body’s own immune system recognize the cancer cells and kill them. He added, “Patients are getting partial and complete remissions, and those remissions are lasting for months and years.”

—Joshua Brody, MD, Director, Lymphoma Immunotherapy Program, The Tisch Cancer Institute, Assistant Professor, Medicine, Hematology, Medical Oncology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

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