Anti-cancer vaccine implant begins US trials in humans

An experimental vaccine implant works differently than conventional cancer vaccines – which involve removing immune cells from the patient, reprogramming them to attack malignancies and reinjecting them – because it works from inside the body. – Jim Barber/shutterstock.com

AN experimental vaccine implant to treat skin cancer has begun early trials in humans, as part of a growing effort to train the immune system to fight tumours, researchers said.

The approach, which was shown to work in lab mice in 2009, involves placing a fingernail-sized sponge under the skin where it reprogrammes a patient’s immune cells to find cancerous melanoma cells and kill them.