This jab could revolutionise cancer treatment

TeloVac harnesses the body's own immune system to fight the disease, freezing tumours. It has already been given to hundreds of Britons with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease.

Survival rates in pancreatic cancer, which killed actor Patrick Swayze, have barely improved in the past 40 years. Patients typically die within six months of diagnosis, the Daily Mail reports.

But it is hoped it will be effective against many other tumours too, including those of the skin, lung and liver. Breast and prostate cancers may also be within its grasp. Together, the six forms of the disease claim more 70,000 lives a year in Britain alone.

Rather than attacking the cancer cells, like many existing drugs, TeloVac jab works by encouraging the immune system to seek out and destroy an enzyme called telomerase.

Found at high levels in many cancer cells, telomerase effectively makes them immortal, allowing them to live on when healthy cells would die - easing the growth and spread of the tumour.

In the largest trial of its kind in Britain, over 1,000 men and women in the late stages of pancreatic cancer are either being given the vaccine alongside their normal drugs or treated as usual.

Liverpool University professor John Neoptolemos, who is co-ordinating the large-scale British trial, said pancreatic cancer cells are normally invisible to the immune system but the vaccine 'spots' the telomerase spilling out from them and kick-starts the fight back.

Healthy cells escape the attack because their levels of telomerase are too low to bother the immune system. This cuts the risk of side-effects such as nausea and hair loss normally seen with cancer drugs.

If the latest study proves the jab's worth, it could be available to treat advanced pancreatic cancer by the end of 2013.

Jay Sangjae Kim, the founder of GemVax, the Korean company developing the TeloVac vaccine, said: "We strongly believe this has the potential to overcome the limits of other current cancer vaccines."