Vaccine 'helps body to beat prostate cancer'

A breakthrough vaccine is set to revolutionise treatment for prostate cancer patients, it was revealed today.

Scientists at London's Royal Marsden Hospital predict the jab will destroy cancer cells and prevent the disease returning.

It will bring hope to the 35,000 men diagnosed every year in the UK with the cancer, which is fatal for at least 10,000, who die after initial treatment.

Doctors say the new vaccine could prevent the deaths by stimulating the immune system to fight the cancer.

Results of the first trials of the drug will be published tomorrow. The £2 million trials were carried out in collaboration with Southampton General Hospital.

Professor Ottensmeier, Southampton hospital's head of experimental cancer medicine, said he was "delighted" with the early findings.

He said: "There were a number of questions that needed answering Is it safe? We find that yes, it is. And does it stimulate the immune system in the way we had predicted in the lab? Yes, it does exactly that." The next round of trials are expected to begin next year.

The vaccine has taken five years to develop and is aimed at patients who have received initial treatment.

More work is needed before the drug can be used by all those with the disease. Professor Peter Johnson, director of Cancer Research UK's Medical Oncology Unit, said it was an important breakthrough. He said: "We have shown that the immune system can be stimulated. Now it is a question of seeing how we can amplify that to make it even more effective" The diseasedevelops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system, when cells of the gland mutate and begin to multiply out of control.

The discovery comes after new figures today showed patients are more likely to survive cancer than 12 years ago. The mortality rate for cancer has dropped by more than 18 per cent since 1995, the Department of Health announced.

It means the Government is on track to meet its target of reducing cancer deaths by 20 per cent by 2010.

Death rates for circulatory diseases, including heart disease and stroke, as well as suicide, have also dropped.

In 1997 there were just over 141 cancer deaths per 100,000 people. Last year this fell to just over 115.5 per 100,000.

Breast cancer remains the most common form diagnosed in women, with one in nine affected. Survival rates have been rising steadily since the Eighties. It is now NHS policy to screen every women aged 50 to 70 for breast cancer every three years.

The programme has screened more than 19 million women and has detected around 117,000 cancers.