Can Vaccines Help Us Treat Cancer?

When people hear ‘vaccine,’ they think flu or pneumonia. What makes a cancer vaccine different? Vaccines that protect against infectious diseases like the flu or pneumonia are commonly made from a weakened form of the virus. It is injected into the body and causes an immune response that helps builds antibodies and T cells (killer cells) to identify and eliminate the virus. Cancer vaccines work in a similar way in using this same principal to teach the body to go after cancer cells. In the first episode of the new “Conversations in Cancer” video series from the Duke Cancer