Pancreatic Cancer Vaccine Progress Reported

Pancreatic cancer kills three-quarters of the people diagnosed with it within a year, and 95 percent within five years.

But now, reports CBS News Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins Medical Center is testing a new approach: teaching a patient's immune system to recognize and fight the cancer.

"What you're essentially trying to do," explains Dr. Dan Laheru, "is have the immune system recognize pancreatic cancer as being foreign."

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He says the vaccine, which is kept in a subzero freezer, is made from pancreatic cancer tumors that have been radiated so they're harmless. The cells of the vaccine are then genetically engineered so the immune system sees them as an enemy and attacks the cancer.

"The idea," Laheru continued, "is that, once the immune system now recognizes cancer cells as being foreign, they have potentially the ability to recognize cancer at any time point and kill them before they have the chance to spread."

He stresses that the trial is in its early stages, and much more work needs to be done. But there's hope that, in time, the vaccine will become an effective tool in the treatment of pancreatic cancer.

The trial only accepts patients who first had pancreatic cancer surgery. Sometimes, the disease is so advanced when it's diagnosed, surgery isn't possible.

Similar vaccines that attempt to utilize the immune system to fight cancer are being worked on to battle other cancers: colon, prostate, breast, and melanoma.

Ashton spoke with Ron Windle. The vaccine appears to have stopped pancreatic cancer in its tracks in him. He says he'd tell others diagnosed with it, "It's not a death sentence. And, if they've been told it's a death sentence, get a second opinion. There is hope out there!"

Ashton says the immune system sometimes doesn't see cancers as foreign because, "Cancers are often clandestine. Pancreatic cancer, specifically, is described by some doctors as a stealth disease: It's good and tricking the body into not knowing it's there."

She also says it's better to have the body's own immune system take it on than chemotherapy and radiation because the other methods can negatively affect other parts of the body, not just the cancer. Doctors like the idea of immunotherapy because they feel the immune system will be better able to target just the cancer.