Cancer discovery links experimental vaccine and biological treatment

A new study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has linked two seemingly unrelated cancer treatments that are both now being tested in clinical trials.

One treatment is a vaccine that targets a structure on the outside of cancer cells, while the other is an altered enzyme that breaks apart RNA and causes the cell to commit suicide.

The new understanding could help both approaches, says UW-Madison professor of biochemistry Ronald Raines, who has long studied ribonucleases