Australian anticancer vaccine to be tested this year

Following the success of an earlier trial, an Australian anticancer drug will be tested on cancer patients in Melbourne later this year.

The Pentrix vaccine, developed by researchers' at Sydney's St. Vincent's Hospital, will be given to 40 patients at three Melbourne hospitals. The promising vaccine is designed to target mutations in the p53 gene, considered responsible for half of all cancers including breast, bowel and lung.

The director of the Centre for Developmental Cancer Therapeutics, Professor Mark Rosenthal, said: 'The vaccine may prove to be a successful weapon against cancer. Identification of the p53 gene was very important as the gene was viewed as the genesis of cancer. Pentrix was developed from patients whose immune systems had successfully fought against the p53 gene and their own cancer. So that cocktail of genetically engineered immune cells became the basis of the vaccine and that process took about seven years. However, depending on success of the trial, Pentrix would not be available for another 10-15 years.'