14 DAY TRIAL // Reports say that anti-viral vaccines have the ability to prevent one in ten cases of cancer. The English Center for Cancer Research estimates 1.8 million, about 18% of new cases of cancer caused by viruses each year worldwide. Vaccines against a wide range of viruses could prevent hundreds of thousands of cases of cancer each year.
Rob Newton, an epidemiologist at the Cancer Research Center, stated about the correspondence between transmissible viruses and cancer: "If you chat to your neighbor with cancer you're not going to catch it. The cancer itself is not infectious. You don't vaccinate against cancer - you vaccinate against the infectious agents that cause it."
These viruses can disrupt the cell's machinery, including its DNA, thing which leads to erratic cell replication, eventually causing tumors.
"Studying the association between infectious agents and human cancers is extremely important because, in such cases, infection represents one defined link in the chain of events leading to cancer development. Knowing this helps us to trace other links in the chain and to understand how the whole chain fits together. More importantly, if we can break the chain by preventing the infection through vaccination, then we can prevent the cancer developing," said lead researcher Professor Alan Rickinson from the University of Birmingham.
Recently, a virus has been created for Hepatitis B, a disease linked to liver cancer. No vaccines have yet been developed to help combat stomach cancer, nasopharyngeal carcinoma and the lymphomas and leukemia associated with infections.
Medical director Professor John Toy added: "As today we successfully vaccinate against infectious diseases, so we shall soon be able to vaccinate against certain types of cancer."