March 11, 2015 By Morgan Sherburne A common booster vaccine could improve the effect of a vaccine aimed at treating a type of brain tumor, leading to improvement in patient survival, according to research published today (March 11) in the journal Nature.
Vaccine therapies have been increasingly used to treat different types of cancer, including glioblastoma. In glioblastoma — the most common and most lethal form of brain tumor — the team, which included researchers from Duke Cancer Institute and University of Florida Health, targeted a common virus called cytomegalovirus. The virus is present in glioblastoma tumors, but not in surrounding brain tissue.