Peptide vaccines can boost immunity against certain cancers

In 10 seconds? Deeper knowledge of how genetic differences between people affect the immune system’s response to cancer is leading to the design of new anti-cancer vaccines.

What’s the story? In our Immunity vs Cancer series, we talked about the important role that immune cells called T cells play in protecting us from and even killing cancer cells. On that note, a lot of research is being done to develop vaccines that can direct our T cells to kill existing cancers (called therapeutic cancer vaccines). In this recent study, scientists who had been studying the details of how T cells might work to recognize and kill a certain type of blood cancer  have made progress towards developing a vaccine to help treat these cancers.