World's first ovarian cancer vaccine developed in UK at University of Oxford 'could wipe out the disease'

 
INA-sources
 
OvarianVax is being developed by researchers at the University of Oxford, with the vaccine aiming to train the immune system to recognise early signs of ovarian cancer and attack it at its earlier stages. There is hope that the jab will eventually be given to women preventatively through the NHS, with hope that this will help to eventually wipe out the disease entirely.
It has been suggested that it would work similarly to the human papillomavirus (HPV) jab, which was rolled out from 2008. Since then, rates of cervical cancer have been cut by 87% in England, according to the British Medical Journal, and is on track to stamp out cervical cancer altogether.
 
The new research is being headed up by Professor Ahmed, director of the ovarian cancer cell laboratory at MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine the University of Oxford, and his team. They will attempt to identify cellular targets for the vaccine by establishing proteins on the surface of early-stage ovarian cancer cells which are most strongly recognized by the immune system.
After assessing how effective the vaccine is in killing mini-models of ovarian cancer in the lab, human trials will begin in people with the BCRA gene, which hugely increases the risk of developing ovarian cancer. The study is being funded by Cancer Research with up to £600,000 over the next three years.
 
Source: National World