Cancer vaccine

Scientist may be a step closer to producing a specific targeted vaccine which could kill cancer cells. They were talking about designing a vaccine that has the ability to home in on proteins and has the capacity to deliver a message to the immune system. This will trigger the immune system to start attacking the invading cancer cells. UK researchers have identified a protein on the immune cells that may harness the body’s defenses to attack a tumor. The protein is unique to only one type of immune cell in the body which is called dendritic cell. Dendritic cell is responsible for triggering the body’s defense system.

The idea is to introduce a foreign molecule from a cancer cell to target dendritic cells. This will then cause the immune system to attack the invading cancer. The same concept could be applied to treatment for diseases HIV or malaria. The vaccines work by triggering an army of immune cells to attack potentially dangerous foreign molecules wherein dendritic cells tend to act as messengers that tells T cells which ones to attack. The research is still ongoing but is very promising indeed.