Some vaccines can prevent diseases but what they are really meant to do is provoke an immune response in the body. That way, the body acquires an immunity to diseases like chicken pox or measles. The immune response can also can fight off a disease and this is why immunotherapy for cancer is so promising. A vaccine getting a lot of attention currently won't make patients immune to a disease but rather will use the immune system to arrest the growth of a disease that patient already has. It's a vaccine, used in treating lung cancer, and it was developed in Cuba. While it doesn't treat the disease directly, and does not prevent it, it does prevent growth from occurring in the body and spreading the disease.
The drug, called Cimivax, has been in use in Cuba for years. Experts say that the drug is easy to make, inexpensive and does not have a lot of nasty side effects. While those are all good points, the true goal of any drug is to treat the disease and it's showing a lot of promise. The fact that it seems effective in so many cases is giving lung cancer patients hope that their disease can be stopped from progressing. It's currently being researched at Roswell Park Cancer Center in New York after being approved for trials in the US.
