Imagine a future where far fewer women are diagnosed with breast cancer, and women with a family history of breast cancer don’t have to make the difficult, even devastating choice to get a preventive mastectomy. Instead, women would get a series of shots that teach their immune systems how to quash breast cancer before it becomes a problem.
A decade or two ago, that future would have sounded fantastical. But in the last six months, multiple clinical trials have brought that much closer to reality. These studies are very early — so far only a handful of people have even gotten the shots.
Yet the arrival of not just one but several breast cancer vaccine studies is an encouraging sign of the amazing progress researchers are making in harnessing the immune system to not just battle cancer, but prevent it in the first place. The potential for treating breast cancer — the most common form of cancer among U.S. women — is huge.
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