Jennifer Davis first noticed a lump in her breast in 2018 and underwent a biopsy, which ruled out cancer.
But when the lump got bigger and doctors conducted a second biopsy, it came back positive for triple-negative breast cancer.
That’s when the 46-year-old nurse and mother of three from Ohio began her long and arduous cancer journey.
Triple-negative breast cancer, or TNBC, is something that “I did not know a lot about when I was diagnosed,” Davis told Yahoo Life, “but going through everything, you learn so much.”
One of the first things Davis learned is that TNBC makes up about 15% of all breast cancer cases, and is particularly difficult to treat.
It’s also one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer since it grows quickly — and TNBC recurs within five years in about 42% of cases, which is roughly three times higher than other types of breast cancer.
Soon after having a double mastectomy — plus several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation — Davis learned about the clinical trials of a breast cancer vaccine, spearheaded by the late Dr. Vincent Tuohy of the Cleveland Clinic.
“My [health care] team informed me of the vaccine that Dr. Tuohy had been studying for a long time,” Davis said of the Cleveland Clinic trials. “So that was lucky.”
As a nurse, Davis understood that clinical trials are “so important,” adding “that’s how we advance medicine and make changes and one day, get rid of breast cancer.”
Davis joined the vaccine trial with 15 other women who had also been diagnosed with TNBC. She received three injections, each one spaced two weeks apart.
“They did lab work prior to every injection,” she said. “I had no side effects except for lumps at the injection site — it was just like any other vaccine or shot that you get.”
Davis received her third and final dose of the vaccine in November 2021. And so far, there has been no sign of the cancer coming back.
“It’s changed my life,” Davis said. “I don’t think about recurrence every single day.”
That’s an important goal, according to Amit Kumar, chairman and chief executive officer of Anixa Biosciences, which created the vaccine being tested by the Cleveland Clinic.
TNBC is “typically much more aggressive, so the outcome for those women is not very good,” Kumar said. He and his team at Anixa Biosciences hope the breast cancer vaccine can “eliminate the recurrence for those women and eventually, prevent the cancer from ever arising.”
Kumar added, “We eventually want to do clinical trials in other types of breast cancer. We might be able to eliminate breast cancer as a disease, just as we have eliminated polio [in the US] and smallpox.”
“The ultimate goal of this research trial is to develop a vaccine that could prevent breast cancer in people who are at risk. It’s a lofty goal, but that would be what we would hope for,” Dr. G. Thomas Budd, of the Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute, said in a statement.
“There are a lot of steps to go through before that. This may not work, but, you know, it’s one of those journeys of 1,000 steps that has to start. So we’re taking the first steps,” Budd added.
As Davis explains, once you receive a TNBC diagnosis, it stays with you. “I’m not going to say you don’t ever think about it,” she said.
But “the fact that it’s working” — based on Davis’s lab work and immune system response, plus the fact that the cancer hasn’t returned — “puts your mind at ease as far as recurrence goes.”
She added, “It’s laid those thoughts to rest. And now I just really live a beautiful life.”