'Personal vaccine' may fight tumours

A personalised vaccine for melanoma - developed from a piece of a patient's tumour - could mean the end of chemotherapy, if trials at Royal Melbourne Hospital are successful.

Doctors hope the vaccine, when injected, will trigger the immune system to attack tumours, and lengthen a patient's life.

Surgical oncologist Bruce Mann, who is directing the Melbourne part of the international trial, hopes the vaccine will be more effective, and have fewer side-effects, than chemotherapy.

The vaccine is made by cutting a piece of a tumour from the patient. The piece is packed in dry ice and sent to a US laboratory to be made into a vaccine. The vaccine is then injected back into the patient at weekly intervals and then fortnightly as treatment progresses.

Mr Mann said he hoped "this type of tailored vaccine will stimulate the immune system to attack the tumour. If there is any way of the patient curing his own cancer, this should be it."