Breast cancer vaccine advancing through testing; woman with Florida connections first to take it

ORLANDO - One in eight women are diagnosed with an invasive breast cancer. 

A new vaccine hopes to protect against one of the more deadly forms of the cancer, and an Orlando woman was the first to take it! FOX 35 News introduced you to Jenni Davis back in April.

Now, she tells us, there’s some exciting new data giving that woman hope.

5 years ago, Davis fought her triple-negative breast cancer and won.

But with a 42% recurrence rate, she knew she’d only won the battle, not the war.

That’s why she decided to head to the Cleveland Medical Clinic and become the very first woman to take Anixa Biosciences’ breast cancer vaccine.

"Clinical trials, you know, they can be scary sometimes," said Davis. "But that's how we advance medicine. And so I'm hoping that that's exactly what this does."

Dr. Amit Kumar is the company’s CEO. He says he has good news about how Phase 1 of the vaccine’s study is progressing.

"Every woman had an immune response," Dr. Kumar announced. "So it shows that the vaccine is teaching each woman's immune system to target the cancer cells."

The other piece of good news is that none of the 16 study participants in Phase 1 had any major side effects from the vaccine. 

"The only side effect I had was the lumps at the injection sites. I've had nothing else," Davis said. "I feel great. I feel better than ever."

Eventually, Anixa Biosciences will move into testing on women who’ve never had breast cancer.

For now, though, they’re focusing on breast cancer survivors like Jenni.

"4 out of ten women will have the cancer come back. And we want to show that in their vaccine group that hopefully zero or maybe just a handful of women will have a recurrence," said Dr. Kumar. 

Doctors hope to move into Phase 2 of the vaccine’s testing next year. That’ll be a blind study with a larger sample group.

"I have two daughters and hopefully grandchildren. And I you know, I pray that this goes the way that it's on trend to go," said Davis.

Anixa Biosciences is looking into vaccines for other cancers too. They already have one in the works for ovarian cancer.