UCLA: Dr. Linda Liau. Brain Tumor Vaccine. Our nearly two decades of research in brain tumor immunotherapy has led to the development of the one of the very first personalized brain cancer vaccines, DCVax-L, which is now being tested in multi-center clinical trials around the world. In 1999, we were the first to test a dendritic cell-based brain cancer vaccine in a human patient. This vaccine utilizes the patient’s own tumor tissue extracted during surgery, combined with the patient’s own specialized immune cells (called dendritic cells) to make the personalized vaccine—formulated specifically for that patient. Once administered to the patient, the vaccine activates the patient’s own killer immune cells to hunt down and attack the brain cancer cells. Given our large team of brain tumor researchers and physician-scientists at UCLA, we are in a position to take the our pre-clinical and clinical findings further and develop the next generation of combination immunotherapeutics in hopes of a brain cancer cure.