An anti-cancer vaccine made with a patient’s own brain tumor has helped several sufferers live much longer than expected, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday. They found three specific targets called antigens in brain tumor cells, and customized a vaccine that, apparently, stalled the growth of the deadly brain cancers. While the 14 patients were not cured, they lived an average of about two and a half years compared to seven and a half months for similar patients who did not get the vaccine, the researchers said. Writing in the journal Cancer Research, Dr. Keith Black and colleagues at Cedars-Sinai medical center in Los Angeles and a team at the National Cancer Institute said they found the antigens in the most common and aggressive type of malignant brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme.
