Breast cancer vaccine provides hope for local patient

ZEELAND, Mich. (WOOD) — Last month, NBC News correspondent Kristen Dahlgren made headlines after announcing that she was leaving news to launch a new organization, the Pink Eraser Project, committed to speed up the timeline to develop an innovative breast cancer treatment.

A breast cancer survivor herself, Dahlgren decided to leave journalism after learning more about a promising new vaccine trial. She told her friends/co-workers on the “Today” show that the trial filled her with hope.

“On my journey as an NBC correspondent going through breast cancer, I have met a lot of amazing women. But none who have given me more hope than Dr. Nora Disis, lead researcher at (University of Washington’s) Cancer Vaccine Institute,” Dahlgren said. “If I have learned anything in 30 years as a journalist, (it’s that) one person really can change the world, but this will go much quicker if everyone joins us.”

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A breast cancer patient from West Michigan holds that hope as well and sees the palpable buzz around Disis’ trial.

Jennifer Brouwer, a mother of two from Zeeland, is one of 199 subjects in Phase 2 of Dr. Disis’ vaccine trial. She was diagnosed with HER2 breast cancer in March 2020 and underwent four months of chemotherapy. After starting and then dropping out of a radiation study trial, she learned of a different trial — Disis’ study — through another breast cancer patient.

“People that know me and knew what happened with my radiation trial were surprised that I was willing to try another trial. But this was completely different,” Brouwer told News 8. “I knew from doing the research and reading the articles that vaccines were the way of the future, and to be part of a vaccine trial, your window of time to participate is (small), because you either have to be in treatment or just so many months out of treatment in order to participate.”

She jumped on the opportunity right away.

“It was a bit of a hassle. I was trying to contact Indiana University’s Simon Cancer Center, but the information on (the National Library of Medicine’s clinical trial database) had changed, so every time I called the phone number for it, I was getting the medical surgical floor at the hospital,” Brouwer explained. “Luckily, I had the contact through Facebook, so she got me the correct information and (within days) I had my consult.”

A POTENTIAL BREAKTHROUGH

Disis and her team of researchers have been working on a breast cancer vaccine for more than a decade now. The first trial stage was conducted back in 2013. It involved 66 women with advanced-stage HER2 breast cancer.

At this stage, the study wasn’t designed to look at whether the vaccine could slow or prevent progression of breast cancer, but the data shows that most of their participants survived much longer than average expectations. Approximately half of all HER2 breast cancer patients at that advanced stage typically die within five years. Last year, 10 years after the first dose, 80% of the patients were still alive.

Brigette Hempstead was one of those trial patients. By 2013, her breast cancer had spread to her lungs and liver, and her oncologist told her she wouldn’t live more than a year.

Now, more than a decade later, she sat down with Dahlgren to show why she’s living proof that the vaccine could be the real deal. While she still undergoes some treatment, Hempstead says she has had several periods where her body scans show no evidence of the disease, and when signs of cancer do form, they disappear.

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That’s what the vaccine is designed to do: teach the body how to identify cancer stem cells and use the immune system to destroy them.

“The pieces are there, and the understanding of the immune system is there,” Disis told Dahlgren. “What we really need is to be able to evaluate these vaccines in a very uniformed manner with a lot of eyes looking at the data coming out of these trials.”

That’s the goal of the Pink Eraser Project, to bring leading researchers together and streamline the most effective studies, including the Disis study out of Washington. So far, researchers from five top programs are already on board, including Disis.

“It is a chance to erase breast cancer as a fatal disease, and, someday, this could lead to vaccines for other cancers as well. We are laser-focused on breast cancer to streamline the process, but we know the ripple effects will help millions,” Dahlgren wrote in her final piece for NBC News.

INSIDE THE TRIAL

The trial is running two simultaneous experiments. Half of the patients received a standard version of the plasma-based vaccine. The other half received specialized versions of the vaccine that were made with their own blood cells, a process called leukapheresis.

It would be notable if the personalized vaccines prove to be effective, but the uniform version would be much more cost-effective and faster to produce.

In all, Brouwer made eight trips down to Bloomington, Indiana — one of several participating locations across the country.

She got her first dose of the generic vaccine in January 2021. It was one of six doses total: the first three each about three weeks apart, then another at the six-month mark, the nine-month mark and the one-year mark. Her final trip was for her first round of blood work.

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Ever since, because she gets regular blood work done to monitor her body, Brouwer can get the tests done locally and share the results with the researchers. That monitoring will continue for at least two more years.

While we wait for results, Brouwer will keep on living her life with the hope that she was a part of a major medical breakthrough.

“I have no evidence of disease, and that’s what they want. I don’t have anything that’s of concern. It’s all good,” she said.

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Brouwer is also hopeful that an organization like the Pink Eraser Project can help people become more aware and ease some of the fears around clinical trials.

“(The vaccine trial) gave me even more hope. Then I got to thinking, I wish every woman could have that hope, because I was able to get this extra layer of protection and there is just so many false ideas out there when I talk to people,” Brouwer explained. “In different cancer groups, people post information about clinical trials and people assume that you can only do a clinical trial if it’s at your hospital or that your doctor has to suggest it.”

She continued: “I wish that women would realize this and be open to having conversations. … Don’t just assume that you have no control over this idea of enrolling in a clinical trial because you have a lot of control over it.”

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