最新一期的《自然·医学》（Nature Medicine）发表文章表示，用于预防乳腺癌的疫苗研究有了重大进展，并将于2年内开始进行临床试验。

该疫苗由美国俄亥俄州克利夫兰医院的Vincent Tuohy教授研发。与通常以病毒活动周期为靶向的疫苗不同，Tuohy教授从免疫学的角度出发，对α-乳清蛋白抗原对乳腺癌的作用进行了研究，该抗原可以激发人体免疫系统对α-乳清蛋白产生特异性的免疫作用。由于α-乳清蛋白仅见于乳腺癌患者和处于哺乳阶段的女性，因此，α-乳清蛋白抗原对乳腺癌具有防治作用。

目前，该疫苗已完成动物实验，而结果令人惊奇：在所选取的易患乳腺癌的小鼠中，那些接种了含有α-乳清蛋白抗原的疫苗的小鼠均没有发生乳腺癌，而没有接受该疫苗的小鼠则全部发生了乳腺癌。此外，该疫苗还可以减小已形成的乳腺癌。如果能在临床阶段获得类似的研究结果，这将是乳腺癌防治过程中最具有里程碑意义的进展，人类从此可以消灭这个女性的“头号杀手”。同时，从免疫学角度出发的新观点也为其他疫苗的研发提供了新思路。

Tuohy教授表示，由于α-乳清蛋白不仅见于乳癌细胞，也出现在哺乳妇女的乳腺组织，因此，哺乳期女性不能接种这种疫苗。不过，患癌风险性较高的40多岁的妇女哺乳几率很低，因此，该疫苗有其广阔的应用前景。

研究者表示，希望尽快开展临床研究，以评估该疫苗的安全性和剂量。

原文出处：

Nature Medicine  doi:10.1038/nm.2161

An autoimmune-mediated strategy for prophylactic breast cancer vaccination
Ritika Jaini,Pavani Kesaraju,Justin M Johnson,Cengiz Z Altuntas,Daniel Jane-wit& Vincent K Tuohy

Department of Immunology, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
Ritika Jaini, Pavani Kesaraju, Justin M Johnson, Cengiz Z Altuntas, Daniel Jane-wit & Vincent K Tuohy
Department of Biology, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
Pavani Kesaraju & Vincent K Tuohy

Although vaccination is most effective when used to prevent disease, cancer vaccine development has focused predominantly on providing therapy against established growing tumors1. The difficulty in developing prophylactic cancer vaccines is primarily due to the fact that tumor antigens are variations of self proteins and would probably mediate profound autoimmune complications if used in a preventive vaccine setting2. Here we use several mouse breast cancer models to define a prototypic strategy for prophylactic cancer vaccination. We selected α-lactalbumin as our target vaccine autoantigen because it is a breast-specific differentiation protein expressed in high amounts in the majority of human breast carcinomas3, 4, 5 and in mammary epithelial cells only during lactation6, 7, 8, 9. We found that immunoreactivity against α-lactalbumin provides substantial protection and therapy against growth of autochthonous tumors in transgenic mouse models of breast cancer and against 4T1 transplantable breast tumors in BALB/c mice. Because α-lactalbumin is conditionally expressed only during lactation, vaccination-induced prophylaxis occurs without any detectable inflammation in normal nonlactating breast tissue. Thus, α-lactalbumin vaccination may provide safe and effective protection against the development of breast cancer for women in their post–child-bearing, premenopausal years, when lactation is readily avoidable and risk for developing breast cancer is high10.