This is part of the story about the first vaccine to be cleared for cancer treatment in the U.S., written by one of the scientists involved.

The online magazine in which this article appears says this about the author. “William Haseltine is a scientist, biotech entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He researched cancer and HIV/AIDS while a professor at Harvard and is the founder of several companies.”

It gives you a look at how discoveries happen, which can be fascinating or definitely not.

This one is the former.

It gives you a look at how long it can take to find an answer about a question which is central to understanding the disease’s secrets.

Do read this. It is not only a breakthrough for prostate cancer patients. This new knowledge very likely will be used in other ways in time. Cancer is many diseases and it possesses as many tricks as any disease known.

Read how this fascinating scientific journey finally took scientists to their destination— a clinical application which works.

The Atlantic Online

“Last Thursday the Food and Drug Administration approved Provenge for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer. Provenge is the first therapeutic vaccine to be approved in the U.S. for cancer treatment, ushering in what may be a new era in immune-based cancer treatments. Approval marks the successful conclusion of a 20-year odyssey with some remarkable twists and turns. (Emphasis added)

“My part of the story begins with research on HIV/AIDS while I was a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Dana Farber Cancer Center. By the early 1980s, it was known that HIV was transmitted sexually between men and women. Because the virus was also transmitted by blood via contaminated needles, infection during sex was also thought to be blood-related, occurring through small tears in the mucosal tissue.

“I began to question this explanation when I read a report documenting seven women that were infected by a single donor during artificial insemination. I began to ask all the scientists I knew if they had ever heard of cells that travel back and forth across mucous membranes. I suspected that such cells, if they existed, might carry the virus into the body across intact membranes…”

Source: Atlantic Online, May 1, 2010