Data shows vaccine effective for late stage melanoma

REUTERS – Mar. 14, 2014 – Updating data from an ongoing clinical trial of 295 patients with advanced melanoma show the vaccine drug effective in shrinking both tumors directly injected with the vaccine and un-injected tumors. The result indicates the vaccine had the desired effect of triggering the immune system to attack cancer cells elsewhere in the body. Sixty-four percent of the directly injected tumors shrank by half, and 47 percent of the tumors disappeared. Of the un-injected tumors, 34 percent shrank by at least half, and 21 percent of those disappeared.  The findings were presented at the Society of Surgical Oncology Cancer Symposium in Phoenix.

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