John Wishman was diagnosed with the deadliest form of brain cancer, glioblastoma, in fall 2020. Two and a half years later, he’s still traveling and enjoying life — a rarity for a cancer with an average survival time of just 12 to 18 months.
Wishman, 61, of Buffalo, New York, attributes that to an experimental vaccine that’s designed to delay the progression of the tumor. The vaccine, called SurVaxM, targets a protein found in tumors called survivin, named for the role it’s thought to play in the survival of cancer cells. Get rid of survivin, the thinking goes, and the cancer cells will die.
It sounds like a far-fetched dream: a vaccine that can delay the return of glioblastoma, one of the deadliest and treatment-resistant cancers. More than 14,000 people in the U.S. were diagnosed last year, according to Tom Halkin, a spokesperson for the National Brain Tumor Society, a nonprofit group. It accounts for almost half of all malignant brain tumors. The disease is devastating for patients and families; the five-year survival rate is 6.8%.