Cancer vaccines are considered either therapeutic (treating an existing cancer) or prophylactic (which prevent cancer from developing in healthy people). Our goal is to develop a therapeutic vaccine for breast cancer. Breast cancer metastasis, when cells from the original tumor spread to other organs, is what usually kills patients. This vaccine would simulate the immune system to discover and destroy metastatic cells. This project is a collaboration between Dr Alana Welm at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. Dr Welm has several different in vivo models for metastasis in mice, including a model where human tumors can be transplanted into mice and go on to reproduce the same metastasis as seen in the patient. We are developing a novel recombinant attenuated Salmonella vaccine (RASV) for this project.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter