By Ed Edelson -HealthDay Reporter
Friday, February 1, 2008; 12:00 AM

FRIDAY, Feb. 1 (HealthDay News) -- An experimental prostate cancer vaccine has stopped the progress of the disease in 90 percent of the mice who got it, California researchers report.

"The vaccine turned the cancer into a chronic, manageable disease," said W. Martin Kast, lead author of a report published in the Feb. 1 issue ofCancer Research.

Twenty mice, genetically bred to develop prostate cancer, were given the vaccine in a two-step process, said Kast, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

When the mice were 8 weeks old, they got one injection consisting of a fragment of DNA that coded for prostate stem cell antigen (PSCA), a protein that is overproduced as prostate cancers grow. That injection alerted the immune system, Kast said.

A second shot, given two weeks later, used a modified horse virus to deliver the gene for PSCA, throwing the immune system into full action against the tumor.

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