One of the companies that received a six-million dollar state grant yesterday is testing a new lung cancer vaccine, and will soon test a vaccine for breast cancer. Dr. Charles Link is an oncologist who is president of the Ames-based company. Link says the lung cancer drug was shipped to the National Cancer Institute last week, and that’s where the trial will be held. The trials for the breast cancer vaccine will start in March, and will be conducted in Iowa. Iowa Farm Bureau president Craig Lange is chairman of the board which handed the grant to New Link Genetics.Lange says it’s “neat that we might have a company here in a farm state that’s going to develop a cure for cancer.” Governor Tom Vilsack’s equally excited. Vilsack says New Link Genetics could be on the “cusp of solving one of medicine’s great dilemmas.” Clinical trials for breast cancer vaccines will follow. If all goes according to plan and the vaccines prove effective, they could be on the market in three or four years.
