Stanford, Calif. -- Researchers at Stanford University are seeking human patients willing to participate in tests of a cancer vaccine that has shown promise in mice.



The Food and Drug Administration has already approved cancer vaccines for blood cancer and researchers have worked with some that target melanoma. But all of those treatments require personalization using a patient's genetics, according to Newsweek.



The Stanford vaccine does not.



Cancer vaccines are given after a patient is diagnosed and are meant to train the immune system to target the disease.



The work at Stanford focused on injecting vaccines into tumors in mice, according to Newsweek. The vaccine successfully triggered the immune systems in the mice to kill the cancer.



The work so far has focused on lymphoma, breast, colon and melanoma tumors, according to Stanford. The cancer recurred in some of the mice, but tumors regressed again after further treatment.



Even mice genetically engineered to spontaneously develop breast cancers in all of their mammary pads responded to the treatment, according to Stanford. Treating the first tumor also often prevented occurrence of future tumors and increased the animals' lifespans.



Scientists conducted tests in over 90 mice, Newsweek said.



For the human tests, researchers are looking for 15 patients with low-grade lymphoma, Stanford said. If successful, researchers believe the treatment could be used for many tumor types.



"I don't think there's a limit to the type of tumor we could potentially treat, as long as it has been infiltrated by the immune system," one of the Stanford researchers, Dr. Ronald Levy, said in a news release.

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