HHS Has a Potential Solution for Cancers That Keep Coming Back: Vaccines - Wall Street Journal
A public-private partnership will fund clinical trials of vaccines that could prevent cancer recurrence.
May 12, 2026
A recent article from The Wall Street Journal profiles a new potential $200 million public-private partnership to fund clinical trials for cancer vaccines launched by the Department of Health and Human Services, through the National Cancer Institute.
The initiative focuses on vaccines that train the immune system to fight tumors in treated patients, unlike infectious disease shots, which prime the immune system before exposure.
Growing understanding of the immune system and its interaction with tumors is fueling hope that vaccines can keep aggressive tumors from returning.
“Advances in genomics, for example, enable researchers to spot targets on tumor cells and create vaccines that trigger an immune response in individual patients,” said Dr. Catherine Wu, a member of the Susan Wojcicki Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Council and chief of the division of stem cell transplantation and cellular therapies at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
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