By: Ivan Wang

For a long time there was never a certain way to cure cancer. That was until recently when Dr.Catherine Wu and her team at the Dana-Farber Cancer institute found out how to make personalized vaccines that fight cancer.

Dr.Catherine Wu realized they could do this after seeing how a bone marrow transplant reactivated the immune system to fight leukemia. After seeing this, Dr.Catherine Wu wondered if they could apply this theory to other types of cancer which is how she and her team eventually created the personalized cancer vaccine.

This personalized cancer vaccine first requires some parts of the dead patient’s cancer cells. Then you must mix it with some adjuvant/drugs before injecting it into the patient.Then the mixture teaches the patient’s cell how to kill the cancer cells and leave the healthy cells alone.

For the first study in 2015 they had 6 people that were suffering from melanoma,which is a type of skin cancer. They created some personalized vaccines for them and injected it into their bodies 7 times over a period of time. By 2017, 4 out of the 6 people had already been cured of their cancer. However, the 2 other people’s cancer,which was the most advanced,came back, but the growths disappeared after they had 4 more doses of the personalized vaccine. By 2021 everyone in the study was free of their cancer.

This has won Dr.Catherine Wu many awards with the most recent being the Sjöberg Prize that comes along with 1,000,000 dollars. 10% of that will go to Dr.Catherine Wu while the rest will go to funding the future of cancer research.

Sources Used:
https://www.dogonews.com/2024/5/30/dr-catherine-wu-wants-to-make-personalized-cancer-vaccines-a-reality