New cancer vaccine trial to begin at New York hospital.

2003 DEC 10 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The first patient was recently vaccinated at New York University (NYU) Medical Center with a specific cancer vaccine designed to prevent tumor recurrences in patients who have already had a kind of cancer called follicular lymphoma.

Lymphoma is a cancer that begins in the lymph nodes. Malignant white blood cells multiply and grow into tumors, enlarging the lymph nodes and other sites in the body. There are many kinds of lymphoma, but one of the most common forms is follicular lymphoma, a low-grade or slow-growing form of the disease.

"Patients with follicular lymphoma are generally diagnosed in their 60s; however, in recent years we have seen an increased incidence in younger individuals in their 30s or 40s," explained Giorgio Inghirami, MD, associate professor of pathology, NYU School of Medicine, who is one the physicians leading the clinical trial.

Even with treatment such as chemotherapy, follicular lymphoma redevelops in virtually all patients. The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society estimates that about 61,000 Americans will be diagnosed with lymphoma this year; about 25,000 of these people will have follicular lymphoma. Consequently, this type of tumor represents one of the most common forms of lymphoma in industrialized countries. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which includes follicular lymphoma, is the fifth most common cancer in the United States.

The lymphoma vaccine is designed to eliminate any cancer cells that are left over after chemotherapy, and therefore prevent the disease from recurring. The vaccine was developed over the past 10 years at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), and it has already undergone Phase I and Phase II trials. These trials are designed to show only that it is safe for use in humans and to evaluate its ...