Cancer vaccines are the new hope. Not a cure, but a hope. It's simply a question of when. Generally, a vaccine pushes the immune system into fighting a particular enemy, parts of which are present in the vaccine itself. Take, for example, the flu vaccine, which contains pieces of the flu virus.
Cancer vaccines are different.
While the immune system can easily recognize invading viruses and bacteria, it has trouble recognizing cancer cells. That's because cancer is not a foreign invader. It's the body's own cell-formation process run amok. And that means that cancer cells look an awful lot like normal cells, making them harder for the body to recognize. Researchers, though, have come up with a way to fool the immune system.