Vaccine shows promise against melanoma.(News)(glycoprotein 100 vaccines)(Brief article)

* Vaccine shows promise against melanoma. An eight-year, 185-patient clinical trial led by the Goshen Center for Cancer Care tested the benefit of combining the gp100 vaccine with the high-dose lnterleuken-2 (IL-2), a biological therapy that boosts the immune system. The study investigated whether IL-2 given with the vaccine would create positive responses for more patients, making the body's immune response even stronger than with IL-2 alone. Sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, the study showed a cancer vaccine doubled the response rate for tumor shrinkage and delayed the progression of cancer in patients with metastatic melanoma. The vaccine primes a patient's immune system to locate and attack the cancer by locating the gp100 protein, a synthetic fragment from a specific protein found on the surface of melanoma cells.

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