Possible vaccine for melanomas

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A melanoma vaccine has been developed for humans and is currently undergoing clinical trials.

It is early, but the tests have seen a range of results from making no difference to the size of melanoma to significant shrinking, and in some cases the disappearance of the disease.

Cancer vaccines are a type of biological therapy, which use natural body substances, or drugs that block them, to treat cancer.

Doctors need to understand why the vaccine works in some people and not others.

They are beginning to see who will benefit and who won’t by looking at the immune response in the first few weeks of treatment. If you have a good immune response, the vaccine is more likely to work.

These developments in the management of human malignant melanoma suggest that there may be some hope of developing a vaccine for treating horses in the future.

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