'Ground-breaking' cancer vaccine trial announced in Southampton
Derek Johnson has been speaking to the team behind the trial.
A 'ground-breaking' cancer treatment is to be run by Southampton's Clinical Trials Unit.
Thousands of patients will be given fast-tracked access to trials of personalised vaccines.
These vaccines are a type of immunotherapy which helps and destroys cancer.
The 'matchmaking' service aims to help find life-saving treatments, with the University Hospital Southampton being one of the first to open to the programme.
Simon Crabb, University of Southampton spoke to ITV News Meridian
Simon Crabb said: "We're now starting to see the opportunity to design personalised vaccines and target those against people's cancers, so that's what's exciting about this.
"We can take a patient's tumour sample, if they've had a biopsy or a surgical procedure, and understand how to design a vaccine against that patient's specific cancer."
Professor Gareth Griffiths, Director of Cancer Research UK Southampton Clinical Trial Unit, says: "Cancer vaccines have the potential to improve the way we treat the disease, particularly for those cancers where treatment options are currently limited or very demanding on patients’ bodies.
"Although there have been some trials of cancer vaccines in the past, there are a new generation of vaccines that that are personalised to individual biological featuresof a patient’s disease.
"We are delighted to have been chosen to run the national platform which will bring together a number of vaccine trials so that patients can access these trials more easily, improving our research knowledge and hopefully leading to improved treatment outcomes for patients."
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