Science View S2012E04 - Cancer Vaccines

One in three Japanese people will die of cancer, so it's no surprise that cancer research is one of the most important medical fields. Currently, there are three established treatments: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. But today scientists around the world are working to add a fourth: cancer vaccines. And Japanese researchers are right in the thick of it! They are identifying genes that are expressed only in cancer cells, and making vaccines from molecules called peptides that form from the breakdown of the proteins these "cancer genes" encode. We hear about patients who were treated with the vaccine-and saw amazing results. And in the studio, we have Yusuke Nakamura of the University of Tokyo Institute of Medical Science, one of Japan's leading researchers in this field.