Women whose lives have been torn apart by breast cancer have praised a promising new vaccine that has shown promise in studies.
Marie Apke, 69, of Chicago, lost her grandmother, mother and younger sister to the disease, which runs in her family.
Ms. Apke herself has a gene mutation that increased her risk of breast cancer by up to 60 percent.
A vaccine being trialled by the Cleveland Clinic believes it could eliminate the disease within a decade thanks to the injection’s huge promise in early trials.
Ms Apke told DailyMail.com she hoped the vaccine would mean “people don’t have to endure my pain in the future.”
‘Think of all the possibilities [if we had the option of a vaccine]… my sisters and my mother had a lot to contribute to the world.
‘Can you imagine what [having a vaccine] would be? I would have sisters with me now.’
Marie Apke (second from the right) lost her grandmother, mother and younger sister to breast cancer, a disease that runs in her family. This was the last photo of them all together, in 2009. (From left: Marie’s older sister Nancy, her mother Verne, Marie and her youngest sister Louise)
Marie Apke underwent a double mastectomy five years ago to reduce her risk of contracting the cancer that killed her mother, grandmother and sister
The vaccine targets a protein called α-lactalbuminm that is only present in the body when a woman is breastfeeding or during breast cancer formation. The vaccine trains the immune system to destroy cells that make that protein, meaning that when cancer cells arise, the immune system will destroy them and they will never have a chance to multiply into a tumor
Meanwhile, mother-of-six Maria Lewis, 56, of Saratoga Springs, Utah, lost her mother to breast cancer and her 36-year-old niece to triple-negative breast cancer.
Just four months after her niece died in 2017, she was diagnosed with the same illness. Her father and uncle also died of cancer.
She told DailyMail.com: “I am very excited to hear about the triple negative vaccine because it is one of the deadliest cancers, especially for young women.
‘If there was anything [like a vaccine] that I could take that could help me or anyone, I would do it in a heartbeat.’
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in American women and is the second leading cause of death in women after lung cancer.
In America alone, approximately 43,700 women will die from breast cancer in 2023.
Mortality rates are falling, but slowly.
Screening has also improved. A leading health panel recently recommended reducing the age at which women are regularly screened for breast cancer from 50 to 40 years.
Mrs Lewis with her husband and their six children in 2010
The vaccine is one of hundreds of cancer shots being trialled to prevent the disease from coming back or prevent it in the first place.
So far, only those who have had triple-negative breast cancer in the past have received the shot, but it is hoped that it will soon be given to healthy people years in advance to prevent them from ever developing cancer. first of its kind.
Dr. Kumar, CEO of Anixa Biosciences, the company developing the vaccine, told DailyMail.com: “If this vaccine is successful in preventing triple-negative breast cancer, as well as many other cancers, we may be able to eliminate breast cancer as a disease.” , just like we eradicated polio and smallpox and things like that.’
Its creator told DailyMail.com that in seven years it could be ready to eliminate triple-negative breast cancer. It is the only candidate for this form of the disease, which is one of the most difficult breast cancers to treat.
Breast cancer has taken a terrible toll on Marie Apke’s family from Illinois.
Her grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 64 in 1965 and underwent a double mastectomy, which was considered radical at the time.
Nearly 20 years later, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She had a lumpectomy – a partial mastectomy where the breast tissue with the lump is removed.
Ms. Apke’s older sister was diagnosed with a rare cancer called bile duct cancer and died in 2009.
Meanwhile, her mother’s breast cancer had returned and she died in her late 80s in 2011.
Ms. Apke told DailyMail.com, “It was one of those things where you thought you had been taken care of but hadn’t.”
Then her younger sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and passed away at the age of 52.
Ms Apke said: ‘It’s weird to have sisters and then not have sisters,’ she said.
About five to ten percent of breast cancer cases are believed to be hereditary.
To reduce her risk of developing cancer, Ms. Apke underwent a double mastectomy about five years ago.
Ms. Apke is a therapist by profession and was a peer counselor for FORCE, a non-profit organization that provides support to individuals and families dealing with a range of hereditary cancers.
According to the National Cancer Institute, a double mastectomy reduces the risk of developing breast cancer by at least 90 percent for women with a strong family history.
The new vaccine, developed over the past 20 years, has been given to 15 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who were in remission from triple-negative breast cancer. To date, none of the patients have seen a recurrence.
Triple-negative breast cancer accounts for about 10-15 percent of breast cancers, but it is one of the most challenging to treat.
APKE added, “People shouldn’t have to go through my pain. Our lives would be so different without it [cancer].
‘Can you imagine what [having a vaccine] would be? I would have sisters with me now.’
“Think of all the possibilities…my sisters and my mom had a lot to contribute to the world.
‘I believe in the power of women to bring beautiful things into the world and thereby overcome the loss of women’s power; it’s huge.’
Maria Lewis, her husband Stephen and grandchild Luke, three weeks before she was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer
Ms Lewis is pictured on her final chemotherapy treatment a week before Christmas 2017
Maria Lewis’s world was also turned upside down by cancer.
Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, which spread to her spine and killed her at age 50.
Her father died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, while her uncle had lung and prostate cancer.
Her 36-year-old niece died of triple-negative breast cancer in March 2017, just four months before Mrs. Lewis was herself diagnosed.
She felt a lump in her breast and went in for a mammogram. “I just knew it was cancer,” she said. ‘I was really scared. I am a mother of six children, the youngest being eight and ten.
She was diagnosed at age 50 and had only three to six months to live. The cancer had already spread to her kidney and my lymph nodes.
‘It’s really frightening. I had just lost my niece, who was 36,” she said.
Mrs. Lewis’ entire family is at high risk for cancer. She said, “They’re all scared because they know it could be a death sentence.”
Mrs. Lewis had undergone targeted chemotherapy, six weeks of radiation, followed by eight surgeries, including a double mastectomy, hysterectomy and removal of her kidney.
She said, ‘I wanted to live for my boys. I know what it felt like to lose my mother.
“I was 25 when my mother died at 50. I really miss my mother; you always miss your mother. I just wanted to do everything I could to survive so my kids could grow up a little bit.”
She added, “I still want my youngest kids to graduate. I’d like to see them get married. There is much to live for. Nobody wants to die.’
Her cousin also died of triple-negative breast cancer in her late twenties.
Ms. Lewis told DailyMail.com: ‘If there was anything out there [like a vaccine] that I could take that could help me or anyone, I would do it in a heartbeat.’
It’s like playing Russian Roulette. With cancer, once you’ve had it, you know it’s coming back, you just don’t know when.’
The new vaccine is the culmination of more than 20 years of progress by the late Dr. Tuohy, a top breast cancer scientist at the Cleveland Clinic’s Research Institute.
During breastfeeding, the body produces a protein called α-lactalbuminm.
As women age and their lactation period ends, the body normally stops making the protein.
α-lactalbuminm is present in more than 70 percent of triple-negative breast cancers.
The vaccine consists of three doses, two weeks apart.
The shot activates the immune system to destroy cancer cells that produce this protein.
T cells are activated and enlarged so that the body attacks α-lactalbumin.
When breast cancer cells that produce α-lactalbumin begin to appear, immune cells destroy the cells before they grow into a mature tumor.
Dr. Thaddeus Stappenbeck, chair of Inflammation and Immunity at Cleveland Clinic, told DailyMail.com: “It is possible to change the target protein of the vaccine to treat other cancers, as long as the protein is no longer expressed in normal healthy tissue. , but is expressed in the tumour.’
He said the clinic is already making progress on an ovarian cancer vaccine using this approach.