By: Emma Xing

Many diseases and illnesses have been cured by scientists already. However, cancer is within the group of diseases that hasn’t been curable. It’s hard to find a cure for cancer, because every person’s cancer is based on their particular genes.

Despite that, Dr. Catherine Wu and her team at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, are attempting to change that by creating custom vaccines to fight each person’s unique type of cancer.

Dr. Wu’s research mainly focuses on using the strength of the immune system to fight cancer cells. She obtained this idea after watching how a bone marrow transplant helped patients diagnosed with leukemia reset their immune system, making it easier for them to heal.

But how do they develop this vaccine? First, the cancer cells in the patient need to be killed or broken down. Then, those dead cancer cells are combined with adjuvant to make a vaccine. The vaccine stimulates the immune system to respond to the antigens.

But before developing the vaccine, they first needed to test if it actually worked. For their first study, Dr. Wu and her team chose six patients diagnosed with advanced melanoma, a type of skin cancer. The scientists analyzed each patient’s cancer’s characteristics. Then they created a personalized vaccine for each individual.

In 2015, all six patients were given a seven shot course of their personalized vaccine. By 2017, four patients showed no signs of the cancer’s reappearance. However, for the remaining two patients, who had the most advanced cancer, the tumor did return. But by 2021, the six patients were officially declared cancer–free.

Dr. Wu’s work has successfully proven personalized vaccines can battle cancer effectively. She has earned plenty of awards for discovering this, including money to further fund the journey to cancer being fully curable.