Ian Frazer, Director of the Diamantina Institute at The University of Queensland
What we've learnt together, through the study of animal models, is that the skin has natural defences which switch off killer T cells (the cells we can produce by vaccination that are designed to get rid of “bad” skin cells). We've also found a number of ways to overcome these blocks and let the immune system work.
We now want to test vaccines based on this knowledge in clinical trials, to find out whether we can develop vaccines that could be used to treat people at risk of skin cancer. We're particularly interested in the skin cancers caused by papillomavirus – we've vaccines to prevent papillomavirus infection, but no vaccines to treat existing infections with these viruses at the moment, and that's what we're working to produce.
http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=16608
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