Elementary School Children Devoted to Raising Money for the Cleveland Clinic’s Breast Cancer Vaccine

By Vera Viner

Three years ago, Dr. Vincent Tuohy and his team from the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute developed a preventive breast cancer vaccine. The vaccine was found to be 100 percent effective in preventing breast cancer in mice that were prone to develop the disease. Tuohy’s research was published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine in June 2010.

The team used the antigen alpha-lactalbumin as the vaccine and found that it not only prevented breast cancer development but also stopped the growth of already existing tumors found in mice. Alpha-lactalbumin is a protein found in the majority of women with breast cancer but not found in healthy women except for those who are nursing children. This means that the vaccine could be used on women who are past the age of forty, the time period when breast cancer risk increases and pregnancy is much less likely.

“We believe that this vaccine will someday be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines prevent polio and measles in children,” Dr. Vincent Tuohy, who is also an immunologist in Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, said in a press release. “If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer.”

The only problem that has been standing in the way of Dr. Tuohy’s research and his plan to move forward with several clinical trials on women is the lack of funding. Major breast cancer organizations have turned him down for further funding. The Susan G. Komen Foundation turned down his request on threeseparate occasions.

“We have no vaccination program for adults and I find this an enormous deficiency in our healthcare. We have no immune protection from disease that we confront with age, like breast cancer,” Dr. Tuohy said in an interview with WNDU.

In addition to Komen, Avon refused to give Tuohy’s team any funding and the Department of Defense declined their proposal. However, despite these setbacks, there has been a strong and growing grassroots effort by women around the world to fund the preventive breast cancer vaccine.

In fact, children who want to grow up in a world without breast cancer have devoted their time and energy to raising funding for the Cleveland Clinic’s vaccine.

A group of elementary school children in Ohio have raised $450 for Dr. Tuohy’s research by collecting coins and spare change from the people around their neighborhood. Dr. Vincent Tuohy is planning on meeting this group of elementary school students to thank them for their efforts.

“This community support is so much more gratifying to me than anything Komen, Avon, or NCI could have done,” Dr. Tuohy said in an email to the Sisters4Prevention organization. “Look at the pride and joy on the faces of these children. We will get this vaccine tested.”

This wonderful grassroots fundraising will make an impact on funding clinical trials of the vaccine. If the biggest breast cancer charities want nothing to do with preventing breast cancer and saving lives, it is up to the rest of us to make an impact and get this vaccine funded. It is time to learn whether the first preventive breast cancer vaccine is as safe and effective in women as it is in animal models.