Women whose lives have been shattered by breast cancer have hailed a promising new vaccine that is showing promise in trials.
Marie Apke, 69, of Chicago, lost her grandmother, mother and younger sister to the disease, which runs in families.
Ms. Apke herself has a genetic mutation that increased her risk of breast cancer by up to 60 percent.
A vaccine being tested by the Cleveland Clinic believes it could eliminate the disease within a decade thanks to the enormous promise of the shot in early trials.
Ms Apke told DailyMail.com she hoped the vaccine would mean “people wouldn’t have to go through my pain” in future.
‘Think of all the possibilities [if we had the option of a vaccine]… my sisters and my mom had a lot to contribute to the world.
‘Can you imagine what [having a vaccine] would be like? Now she would have sisters with me.
Marie Apke (second from right) lost her grandmother, mother and younger sister to breast cancer, a family issue. This was the last photo of all of them together, in 2009. (From left to right: Marie’s older sister Nancy, her mother Verne, Marie and her younger 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-lactalbumin that only exists in the body when a woman is breastfeeding or during the formation of breast cancer. The vaccine trains the immune system to destroy the cells that make that protein, which means that when cancer cells arise, the immune system will destroy them and they will never have a chance to multiply into a tumor.
Meanwhile, 56-year-old mother of six Maria Lewis of Saratoga Springs, Utah, lost her mother to breast cancer and her 36-year-old niece to triple-negative breast cancer.
She herself was diagnosed with the same disease just four months after her niece died in 2017. 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 forms of cancer, especially for young women.
‘If there was something out there [like a vaccine] that I could take, that maybe it would help me or anyone, I would do it in the blink of an eye.’
Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed among American women and is the second leading cause of death among women after lung cancer.
In 2023 alone, about 43,700 women will die of breast cancer in the United States.
Mortality rates are falling, but slowly.
Detection has also improved. A major health panel recently recommended that the age at which women get regular breast cancer screening be lowered from 50 to 40 years.
Mrs Lewis with her husband and six children in 2010
The vaccine is one of hundreds of cancer shots being tested to prevent the disease from recurring or to prevent it in the first place.
So far, only those who have had triple-negative breast cancer in the past have received the vaccine, but it is expected that it will soon be given to healthy people years in advance to prevent them from getting cancer, making the vaccine the first of its kind.
Dr Kumar, chief executive 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 could eliminate breast cancer as a disease, just like we have eliminated polio and smallpox and things like that.’
Its creator told DailyMail.com that it could be ready to eliminate triple-negative breast cancer in seven years. 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 the family of Marie Apke, who lives in Illinois.
Her grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 64 in 1965 and underwent a double mastectomy, which at the time was considered radical.
Nearly 20 years later, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She underwent a lumpectomy, a partial mastectomy in which the breast tissue containing 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 at age 80 in 2011.
Ms Apke told DailyMail.com: “It was one of those things that you thought was fixed, but it wasn’t.”
Then her younger sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and died at age 52.
Ms Apke said: “It’s strange to have sisters and then not have sisters,” she said.
It is believed that about 5 to 10 percent of breast cancer cases are hereditary.
To reduce her risk of cancer, Ms. Apke underwent a double mastectomy about five years ago.
Ms. Apke is a therapist by trade and was a former peer counselor for FORCE, a non-profit organization that offers support to individuals and families dealing with a variety 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, was given to 15 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who were in remission from triple-negative breast cancer. So far, none of the patients have seen a recurrence.
Triple negative breast cancer accounts for about 10 to 15 percent of breast cancers, but it is one of the most difficult to treat.
APKE added: ‘People shouldn’t have to go through my pain. Our lives would be so different without [cancer].
‘Can you imagine what [having a vaccine] would be like? Now she would have sisters with me.
‘Think of all the possibilities… my sisters and my mom had so much to contribute to the world.
‘I believe in the power of women to bring wonderful things to the world and to be able to eliminate the disempowerment of women through that; it’s huge.’
Maria Lewis, her husband Stephen and their grandson Luke, three weeks before she was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer
Ms Lewis is pictured during her last chemotherapy treatment a week before Christmas 2017
Maria Lewis also had her world turned upside down by cancer.
His mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, which spread to her spine, killing her at age 50.
His father died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, while his uncle had lung cancer and prostate cancer.
Her 36-year-old niece died of triple negative breast cancer in March 2017, just four months before Ms Lewis was diagnosed.
She felt a lump in her breast and went to have a mammogram. “I just knew it was cancer,” she said. ‘I was very scared. I am the mother of six children, and the youngest were eight and ten.
She was diagnosed at age 50 and given only three to six months to live. The cancer had already spread to her kidney and my lymph nodes.
‘It’s really scary. I had just lost my niece, who was 36 years old,” she said.
Ms. Lewis’s entire family is at high risk of cancer. She said: ‘Everyone is scared because they know it can be a death sentence.’
Ms. Lewis received targeted chemotherapy, six weeks of radiation, followed by eight surgeries, including a double mastectomy, a hysterectomy, and the removal of her kidney.
She said: ‘I wanted to live for my children. I know what it feels like to lose my mother.
‘I was 25 years old when my mother died at the age of 50. I really miss my mom; you always miss your mom. I just wanted to do whatever I could to survive so my kids could be a little bit older.
She added: ‘I still want to see my youngest children graduate. I would like to see them get married. There is a lot to live for. Nobody wants to die.
Her cousin also died of triple negative breast cancer in her early 20s.
Ms Lewis told DailyMail.com: “If there was anything out there [like a vaccine] that I could take, that maybe it would help me or anyone, I would do it in the blink of an eye.’
It’s like playing Russian roulette. With cancer, once you’ve had it, you know it will come back, but you don’t know when.’
The new vaccine is the result of more than 20 years of progress by the late Dr. Tuohy, who was a leading breast cancer scientist at the Cleveland Clinic Research Institute.
During lactation, the body produces a protein called α-lactalbumin.
As women age and lactation ends, the body normally stops producing the protein.
α-Lactalbumin is present in more than 70 percent of triple-negative breast cancers.
The vaccine consists of three doses, two weeks apart.
The injection activates the immune system to destroy cancer cells that produce this protein.
T cells become activated and expand 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 develop into a mature tumor.
Dr Thaddeus Stappenbeck, chair of inflammation and immunity at the Cleveland Clinic, told DailyMail.com: “It is possible to change the protein target of the vaccine to treat other forms of cancer, as long as the protein is no longer expressed in tissues. normal healthy, but expressed in the tumor.’
He said the clinic is already making progress on an ovarian cancer vaccine using this approach.
