The University of Oxford announced that they are now developing a vaccine against ovarian cancer that they hope will eradicate this disease from the face of the earth in the near future. The OvarianVax vaccine was developed by a team led by Professor Ahmed Ahmed from the University of Oxford's MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine.
The team is identifying a cellular target for the vaccine that works through the protein in early-stage ovarian cancer cells. When identified later it can be hunted down and destroyed by OvarianVax. Researchers hope the vaccine can then undergo clinical trials on women with BRCA gene mutations.
As many as 45% of women with a BRCA1 gene mutation and 20% of women with a BRCA2 gene mutation will have ovarian cancer by the age of 80. They are advised to remove both ovaries by the age of 35 to reduce the risk of cancer that causes them to no longer be able to have children after undergoing the procedure.
There is still no timeline when this vaccine will be given to the public. For sure it is another effort to develop a vaccine against cancer by the University of Oxford who previously succeeded in developing AstraZeneca's vaccine against Covid-19