LEXINGTON — A pair of University of Kentucky researchers are hoping to fight lung cancer with a new vaccine designed to reduce the risk of recurrence of the disease.

        The two announced a clinical trial Thursday in which they are enrolling as many as 30 patients over a two-year period diagnosed with non-small-cell lung cancer who already have undergone surgery, radiation or chemotherapy.

        Although the vaccine will not prevent lung cancer in those who have never had it, the two doctors hope it can prevent the disease from returning and help maintain remission periods after treatment.

        “Even after potentially curative surgery, individuals have a 15 to 50 percent chance of recurrence depending on the stage of cancer at the time of diagnosis,” said Dr. Edward Hirschowitz, an assistant professor of medicine at the school.

        “Because additional medical therapies are not generally recommended until recurrences are seen, we are using the window between medical and surgical therapy and recurrence to enhance the body's immune response to residual cancer.”

        According to the American Cancer Society, more people will die this year from lung cancer than from breast, prostate and colorectal cancers combined.

        The disease kills 75 percent to 80 percent of those it infects. An estimated 89,200 men and 65,700 women in this country will die from lung cancer this year.

        More than 87 percent of lung cancers are smoking related. Not coincidentally, Kentucky leads the nation in both percentage of smokers and incidence of lung cancer.

        “It's disheartening to realize that the Commonwealth of Kentucky leads the nation in the incidence of lung cancer,” said Dr. Alfred Cohen, director of the university's Markey Cancer Center. “There's about 50 percent more lung cancer in Kentucky than the national average. That's catastrophic.”

        The vaccine uses dendritic cells, the most potent immune inducing cells in the human body, to attack cancerous cells and tumors.

        To produce the vaccine, doctors draw white blood cells — which include the dendritic cells — from a patient's own blood, duplicate them in the laboratory and mix them with cancer proteins derived from lung cancer cells.

        When the dendritic cells ingest the lung cancer proteins, they are then retrained to direct the immune system to target and kill cancer cells.

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