Historically vaccines have been solely prophylactic (preventative) agents as a way of preventing infectious diseases. One of the first was introduced by Edward Jenner who treated people with infectious material from patients with the mild infection of cowpox (variola vaccinae - Latin for "smallpox of the cow") to prevent the potentially fatal human Smallpox (variola). He named the process Vaccination (for obvious reasons). With the DCVax family we now have the first examples of established disease being treated by vaccination (incorrectly named from my point of view).
With Dr Bosch's observation that there is a considerable overlap of malignant epitopes between various unrelated malignancies, a potential new realm of prophylaxis (ie "true" vaccination) opens up. This would be the prevention (by vaccination) of many/most/all malignant diseases using a simple extension of the the DCVax method which for the mid-term future would be the only way of achieving this end. The only alteration to the method would be the nature of the lysate to which the individual's dendrocytes are exposed. Instead of the lysate being derived from the patient';s own tumour, it would be derived from as many different malignant tumours from as many different individuals as would be considered necessary or practical. A continuous supply of the tumour cells could be maintained by tissue culture and a suitable "cocktail" could be worked up to contain as many known malignant epitopes as possible. These would then be lysed as per usual and the individuals dendrocytes exposed to the lysate as per usual. Courses of the vaccine would then be given to sensitise the immune system to all known malignant epitopes so that all malignant cells would be whopped off as soon as they mutated with malignant epitopes appearing on their surfaces.
Because the malignant cells are derived from different individuals some dendrocytes will be sensitised to the foreign (non-malignant) genetic material but this should not cause any problems unless the immunised individual needed an organ transplant when the clones of dendrocytes sensitised in this way may (but not must) be activated against the transplant.
It is clear that this expensive treatment would not achieve instant universal acceptance but I have no doubt that enough very rich people would undoubtedly be sufficiently keen to avoid developing cancer that a steady income could be achieved by the company until the price were driven down and it could enter general use
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