Catherine Wu, professor in medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, is praised for her work with personalized cancer vaccines. She hopes that with the help of a large Swedish prize, the method will become standard.
”It has been a long and winding struggle to reach effective vaccines that combat cancer,” says Urban Lendahl, a professor of genetics and secretary of the Sjöberg Foundation.
One of the researchers who has worked on the issue is medicine professor Catherine Wu, at the American Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who is now awarded the foundation’s prize.
She and her colleagues have worked to find out which of the thousands of mutations in cancer cells can be targeted. Since each tumor is different, the vaccine needs to be tailored to each patient, by analyzing the tumor, comparing it with the patient’s immune system, and then stimulating the body’s T-cells to detect and destroy the cells in question.
”The vaccine comes after getting sick, because you have to see which mutations are in the cancer tumors first,” says Lendahl.
A benefit of the method is that T-cells target a type of protein on the tumor cell surface that is only found on cancer cells, preventing them from attacking healthy tissue.
Of the million dollar prize, 900,000 will go towards further research. Wu is hopeful that the prize will make a difference and is confident that they have something important in the works.
The Sjöberg Prize is one of the largest Swedish prizes for medical research, and is awarded in cooperation between the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Sjöberg Foundation to someone who has made a significant contribution to cancer research. The prize was established after a donation from businessman Bengt Sjöberg, who passed away from cancer in 2017, the same year the first prize was awarded.
Unlike the Nobel Prize, the idea of the Sjöberg Prize is to encourage ongoing research. 100,000 dollars of the million dollar prize is a personal award, while 900,000 dollars is given for continued research.
