Breast Cancer Vaccines 101: Alpha-Lactalbumin

By Dr. Kathleen T. Ruddy

Alpha-lactalbumin is an unique protein manufactured exclusively by cells that line the ducts of the breasts.  Under normal conditions, it is made during the third trimester of pregnancy and continues to be made if, and only if (and for as long as) a woman breastfeeds her infant.

Alpha-lactalbumin’s role is to provide additional fuel to the breast cells to meet the increased energy requirements associated with milk production.   Once breastfeeding ceases, alpha-lactalbumin is retired:  it is no longer made and simply vanishes.

Under normal conditions, alpha-lactalbumin is only made by women whose breasts are either preparing for lactation, as happens during the third-trimester of pregnancy, or are actively engaged in breastfeeding.  But under abnormal conditions … well, that’s a different story, for alpha-lactalbumin is made by the majority of breast cancers!  This isn’t surprising:  malignancies tend to be rapidly growing masses with abnormally high energy requirements.  Alpha-lactalbumin does for the tumor what it does for the lactating breast – increases the fuel supply to meet the increased metabolic demands of the cells.

Scientists have known for years that the majority of breast cancers make alpha-lactalbumin.  As a consequence, many have tried to develop a blood test to detect the presence of alpha-lactalbumin as a screen for early detection of breast cancer, or to diagnose an early recurrence of the disease.  Unfortunately, all attempts at creating a useful blood test for the detection of breast cancer have failed.  And so, scientists and the biotech companies they work for gave up on alpha-lactalbumin and proceeded down another road in their race for a cure.

But Professor Vincent Tuohy of the Cleveland Clinic, an internally acclaimed immunologist whose research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, didn’t give up on alpha-lactalbumin.  He hypothesized that alpha-lactalbumin might be a worthy target for the development of a preventive breast cancer vaccine.  After all, if he could make a vaccine against a protein expressed by the majority of breast cancers, he could alert a woman’s immune system to recognize any breast cancer cells that expressed alpha-lactalbumin, recruiting her own killer cells to destroy them.  Each and every one of them.

After ten years of research, Tuohy was finally satisfied that he had a vaccine he could test on mice.  When he did, he found that his vaccine was 100% effective in preventing breast cancer.  That is, none of the vaccinated mice developed breast cancer, while all the non-vaccinated mice did.  Tuohy repeated his experiments using two other animal models, and observed the same results:  the vaccine was completely effective in preventing breast cancer in 100% of vaccinated animals.

No other scientist had ever attempted such a feat; indeed, there is no report of such a vaccine to be found anywhere in the scientific literature.  Furthermore, the scientific and editorial review board of Nature Medicine, which published Tuohy’s paper in May 2010, would never have done so if there had been similar (or contradictory) data published elsewhere.  Let me emphasize, Nature Medicine fully vetted, confirmed and verified Tuohy’s data.  In publishing his paper, the members of the editorial review board essentially validated his results for the scientific and lay community alike.

Tuohy’s vaccine is the first successful prophylactic breast cancer vaccine ever made.  It’s completely effective in preventing breast cancer in three different animal models, and is ready for clinical trials to see if it is safe for use in women.

Skepticism among the lay public is completely understandable.  After all, how often do we find that any intervention is 100% effective?  Rarely, I admit; though exceptions such as the polio vaccine do prove that a 100% result is occasionally achievable.

I have a great deal of empathy for the lay public who struggle to wrap their minds around the validity and importance of this breakthrough.  But I’m running out of patience with the small league of ‘experts’ who have systematically ignored, ridiculed or, in other highly creative ways honed in the corridors of ivory towers, undermined the validity of Tuohy’s achievement.

 

I shouldn’t be surprised at this display of academic belligerence.  Blind obstruction of revolutionary innovation happens so often in medicine that it has become something of tradition!  Entire treatises have been written about why it takes so long for scientific breakthroughs to gain traction.  In 1962, Thomas Kuhn of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote the definitive work on the subject, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.  I wonder how many people have read it -    certainly not those who would benefit most from a little more reading and a lot less pontificating.

History is replete with stories of brilliant scientific discoveries undermined – no, trashed! – by ‘experts’.  A short litany should suffice to make the case:

1. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was a 19^th century Hungarian obstetrician who discovered that if doctors washed their hands when delivering babies the maternal mortality rate could be reduced from the standard 10-35% to less than 1%!  He was ignored or ridiculed by his arrogant colleagues, while women continued to die of childbed fever.
2. Albert Sabin created a better, safer polio vaccine than the one Jonas Salk had devised.  He, too, was ignored.   Sabin, a Jew who’d escaped Nazi Europe, was forced to leave the United States and go to Russia – hostile territory, to say the least – where he vaccinated 10 million Soviets before he returned home a hero.
3. In the 1980’s, Harald zur Hausen discovered that the human papilloma virus caused cervical cancer.  No one believed him.  It took zur Hausen thirty years to prove his point.  In the meantime, thousands of women died needlessly and miserably of what is now a preventable disease.
4. Dr. Barry Marshall discovered that a simple bacteria, helicobacter pylori, causes peptic ulcer disease and stomach cancer.  The orthodox medical community ridiculed him mercilessly.  Like zur Hausen, it took Marshall decades to convince his detractors that he was right.  Meanwhile, thousands of people suffered and died of a disease that is now eradicated by two weeks of antibiotics.

The history of medicine amply demonstrates that decades of trashing by ‘experts’ typically precedes adoption of a revolutionary breakthrough, and always at the expense of suffering humanity.

Women shall not suffer yet another injustice in the service of orthodox egos, not this time.

Test the vaccine.  Now, not a hundred years from now.