A vaccine developed for an aggressive form of breast cancer is currently being tested in human clinical trials.

If the trials are successful, the vaccine would be groundbreaking, preventing recurrence of triple-negative breast cancer, which makes up about 10% to 15% of all breast cancers and is particularly challenging to treat.

According to an article published by John Hopkins, triple-negative breast cancer is one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer because it grows quickly and has a higher rate of recurrence — locally, in the breast area, or to other parts of the body, meaning metastasis. In fact, the risk of the cancer recurring within five years of being diagnosed is nearly three times higher in patients with triple-negative breast cancer than in those who don’t have that type of breast cancer.

Yahoo! interviewed Jennifer Davis who is the first person to receive the vaccine as part of the clinical trial.

Davis is a 46-year-old nurse and a mother of three living in Ohio, USA. She was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in 2018, undergoing a double mastectomy and several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation.

During her follow-up appointment, she came to know about the breast cancer vaccine trial.

The vaccine has been under development for 20 years based on research led by Vincent Tuohy, who died in January 2023, and its human trials started in October 2021.

“My [health care] team informed me of the vaccine that Dr. Tuohy had been studying for a long time,” Davis said.

“It’s just that kind of breast cancer — that particular type — there’s nothing I can take afterward, no tamoxifen [a hormone therapy], and recurrence is high. If it does come back, outcomes are not the greatest. So I wanted to take something — the vaccine was that for me.”

And because Davis is a nurse she claims to understand the importance of clinical trials, adding, “That’s how we advance medicine and make changes and one day, get rid of breast cancer.”

Chairman and chief executive officer of Anixa Biosciences, licensed to create the vaccine, Amit Kumar says that 42% of women with triple-negative breast cancer will get the cancer again within five years. “It’s typically much more aggressive, so the outcome for those women is not very good,” he tells Yahoo Life.

The purpose of the breast cancer vaccine is to “eliminate the recurrence for those women and eventually, prevent the cancer from ever arising.”