VIDEO | 01:02
Cancer vaccines are a promising way to outsmart cancer, especially when combined with other immune-stimulating drugs. These types of vaccines are immunotherapies, meaning that only people who have cancer get them to treat their cancer. These are different than the vaccines you get to “prevent” illness, like the flu. Those are generally given only to healthy people, because they are meant to prevent you from getting sick in the first place.
Your immune system naturally provides one of the best defenses against cancer. But sometimes it needs a little bit of help. That’s because cancer cells are clever and find ways to evade attacks. Therapeutic cancer vaccines give your immune system a boost, helping it to find and fight cancer. Memorial Sloan Kettering doctors are working hard to make these and other immunotherapies more effective, for more people.
Therapeutic cancer vaccines have two main ingredients: distinctive markers called antigens that distinguish cancer cells from normal cells and a chemical “red flag” called an adjuvant that alerts the immune system that cancer is present. When injected, this powerful combination of ingredients jump-starts an immune response to the cancer. Immune cells can then find and destroy cancer cells in the body.