In a basement lab of a Tampa hospital, a scientist at Morphogenesis injects genetic material from a common streptococcal bacterium into a cluster of tumor cells taken from a dog with cancer. Within a couple of days, a protein that's specific to the bacteria shows up on the surface of the tumor cells.
The company then irradiates the protein-tagged cancer cells, turning them into a vaccine it calls ImmuneFx that can be injected into dogs suffering from lymphoma and other cancers.
Morphogenesis CEO Patricia Lawman explains how the vaccine works: Cancer cells, she says, grow unchecked because they produce so many mutations that the body's immune system stops recognizing them as intruders. The vaccine, once it's injected into the animal, tags the cancer cells with the protein, essentially planting "a red flag on top of the cancer cell that says 'I'm foreign.' "