Hello and welcome to living in the Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

One out of every eight women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Foundation.

It's the most common form of cancer among females, aside from skin cancer.

But a new vaccine aims to not only fight breast cancer, but also prevent it.

And clinical trials are underway.

Vaccines have proven to be an effective way to stave off infectious diseases like the flu and Covid.

Now, doctors are hoping they can use similar technology to eliminate different cancers.

So we hope to be able to usher in, over the next decade or two, the era of vaccines.

Eliminating most of the major cancers that are, you know, killers of humanity.

Doctor Amit Kumar is the chairman and CEO of California based in Nicosia.

Biosciences.

His team is working alongside the Cleveland Clinic to develop and release a breast cancer vaccine.

The goal of this vaccine is to not only help treat patients who are battling breast cancer at the time, to a newly diagnosed breast cancer patients, but also to prevent breast cancer.

You know, prophylactic manner so that we can give it to women who are concerned about breast cancer, in the future and help prevent it.

Right now, the Cleveland Clinic is focused on triple negative breast cancer, the most lethal form of breast cancer.

But researchers anticipate the vaccine will be successful in preventing and treating other types as well.

We're in a phase one study where we are testing it on three different groups of women to evaluate, whether the vaccine is safe and tolerable, and also determine if the patients who are getting the vaccine are having an immune response, meaning the vaccine is doing what it's supposed to do.

Those trials are something doctors in the Lehigh Valley are watching closely.

Clinical trials are really the engine where new options come open for patients.

And, a topper cancer institute.

We have about 150 clinical trials and, vaccines serve.

One of the new options in clinical trials.

Doctor Nair is the chief of the Lehigh Valley Topper Cancer Institute at Lehigh Valley Health Network, where clinical trials are underway for other cancer vaccines.

We're partnering with, Memorial Sloan Kettering and a company out of Boston and testing a pancreatic cancer vaccine.

This is for patients who have had already had surgery for stage one, 2 or 3 pancreatic cancer.

LVHN is also working on a melanoma vaccine.

But Doctor Nair says they hope to work with other research partners to bring even more clinical trials, like the breast cancer vaccine, to the area.

Clinical trials are under very tight control by the FDA.

So they're really watched closely, with a lot of regulatory control.

And, you know, for safety.

But but, clinical trials, really improve care and they improve options for cancer patients.

As for the breast cancer vaccine, if all goes well, Doctor Kumar says his team hopes to offer it first to women experiencing breast cancer in the next 3 to 5 years.

And we believe it'll be available in steps.

Initially, it it'll be available for women who are, battling breast cancer at the time and then eventually it'll be available for all the women in the world who are worried about breast cancer, who are healthy at the time, but are concerned that they're going to get breast cancer.

Kumar says doctors were 100% effective in preventing breast cancer in animal studies.

Similar vaccines are being tested for ovarian, colon, prostate and lung cancer.

That'll do it for this edition of living in the Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney, hoping you stay happy and healthy.