Dr. Mittendorf on Vaccines as Prevention for Breast Cancer

Elizabeth A. Mittendorf, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Surgical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the potential use of vaccines as a preventative measure for breast cancer, particularly to combat recurrence.

Instead of using vaccines in the secondary prevention setting, Mittendorf suggests moving it to primary prevention, similar to how vaccines would be used for infectious diseases. There are clinical trials, she explains, where vaccines have been administered to patients diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ to stimulate a patient’s immune system. The primary use of vaccines could be significant due to the smaller amounts of heterogeneity or genomic instability in the early stages of cancer.

When diagnosed, the patient would receive 3 inoculations of the vaccine and then undergo surgery, allowing researchers to determine how many of the T cells are received. The vaccine’s ability to stimulate the T-cell response in the tumor, leads to the next stage of the development plan to use the vaccines with other immunotherapeutic agents that are targeting checkpoint blockade molecules.