Prostate Cancer :: Prostate cancer vaccine development gets grant

Mater Medical Research Institute director Professor Derek Hart and the team develop the prostate cancer vaccine which appears safe in the first five patients studied in a phase-one trial.

Australian State Development Minister John Mickel announced a $500,000 funding for the program from the Smart State Health and Medical Research Fund to help further research in development of the prostate cancer vaccine.

“The kind of research conducted by the Mater Medical Research Institute is of enormous significance ? and the work being done with the prostate cancer clinical trial will benefit many men,” Mr Mickel said.

The vaccine works by retraining dendritic blood cells to seek out and attack the cancer in a way similar to an attack on a cold or flu. The vaccine involves patients entering hospital to have blood taken for the vaccine, which is administered the next day.

Prostate cancer is a disease in which cells in the prostate gland become abnormal and start to grow uncontrollably, forming tumors.

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed malignancy among adult males in Western countries. Although prostate cancer is often very slow growing, it can be aggressive, especially in younger men. Given its slow growing nature, many men with the disease die of other causes rather than from the cancer itself.

Prostate cancer affects African-American men twice as often as white men; the mortality rate among African-Americans is also two times higher. African-Americans have the highest rate of prostate cancer of any world population group.


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