Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
A cross-disciplinary team of Harvard scientists, engineers, and clinicians announced today that they have begun a Phase I clinical trial of an implantable vaccine to treat melanoma, the most lethal form of skin cancer. The effort is the fruit of a new model of translational research being pursued at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University that integrates the latest cancer research with bioinspired technology development. It was led by Wyss core faculty member David J. Mooney, who is also the Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Wyss Institute associate faculty member Glenn Dranoff, who is co-leader of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Cancer Vaccine Center. Most therapeutic cancer vaccines available require doctors to first remove the patient’s immune cells, then reprogram them and reintroduce them back into the body. The new approach, which was first reported to eliminate...