In groundbreaking research, scientists are developing the first-ever ovarian vaccine in the world.
According to BBC, scientists from the University of Oxford are developing an ovarian cancer vaccine, OvarianVax, which they believe will recognise and fight against the disease in the earliest stages.
Director of the university's ovarian cancer cell laboratory, Prof. Ahmed Ahmed, said that although there is still “a long way to go,” he was “optimistic.”
Talking about the vaccine, Ahmed explained, “The idea is, if you give the vaccine, these tiny tumours will hopefully either reduce, shrink really significantly, or disappear.”
Scientists had planned to develop a vaccine that could help the immune system detect proteins on the surface of ovarian cancer, known as tumour-associated antigens.
The next step would be testing the vaccine on women with genetic mutations as they have a higher risk of ovarian cancer and on women from the general population who did not have any risk of disease to test the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Dr David Crosby, head of prevention and early detection research at Cancer Research UK, asserted, “At this stage, scientists are testing the best components to include in the vaccine by first trialling it in the lab with samples taken from ovarian cancer patients.”
To note, Cancer Research UK has funded this research with up to £600,000 over the next three years.
