Cancer Vaccine Institute News

The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health have partnered to raise nearly $200 million to fund cancer vaccine clinical trials, including mRNA-based approaches for patients at high risk for tumor recurrence. Dr. Nora Disis In a recent article from Lancet Oncology,  Dr. Nora Disis, Director of the Cancer Vaccine Institute (CVI), called the initiative a promising start, but commented that the scale of the investment remains sm

Photo Credits: Fred Hutch Dr. Natasha (Tasha) Hunter , Cancer Vaccine Institute Director of Clinical Trials, has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Athena Endowed Award for Excellence in Breast Cancer Research. The Athena Award was established to recognize an early career researcher making the greatest contribution during the past year toward advancing research to improve the prevention, detection, diagnosis and/or treatment of breast cancer. Read more about Dr. Hunte

The Cancer Vaccine Institute (CVI) took park in the 2025 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium from December 9-12, 2025, bringing our latest research to one of the world's leading forums for breast cancer science. Faculty members from the CVI presented four scientific posters with fellow collaborators, researchers, and scientists. Through these presentations, the CVI team highlighted recent discoveries in HER2-targeted vaccines, neoadjuvant immunotherapy, and findings from our

Dr. Ying Liu presented this study at the 2025 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium At the UW Cancer Vaccine Institute, we are working to develop vaccines that train the immune system to recognize and eliminate cancer. At the 2025 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, we shared new data comparing two of our HER2-targeted therapeutic vaccine platforms for people with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer. About 20% of all breast cancers overexpress the HER2 protein, which can make

The Cancer Vaccine Institute (CVI) was excited to share new results from a multi-center clinical trial led by Moffitt Cancer Center at the 2025 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. These results offer encouraging evidence for WOKVAC, a HER2-targeted DNA vaccine developed here at the CVI. In this study, Moffitt and collaborating sites evaluated whether HER2 vaccination could help prevent recurrence in patients at especially high risk, including individuals who still have invas