‘I am the first Person to get the new breast cancer vaccine and it completely changed my life’

Jennifer Davis, 46, was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in 2018, and underwent intense treatment and chemotherapy. In 2021, she opted to receive the first triple-negative breast cancer vaccine when human trials began. She is the first person in the world to receive the groundbreaking, preventative vaccine.

Found a lump in my left breast in February of 2018. After being diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), and undergoing more than a year of brutal treatment and surgeries, I was finally cancer-free. But my story didn’t end there.

I had survived the most lethal form of breast cancer, but it also has one of the highest risks of relapse. I lived in fear of another cancer diagnosis until, in 2021, I became the first person in the world to receive a groundbreaking new vaccine designed to prevent breast cancer. It completely changed my life.

I first felt the lump in my left breast during a self-check.

I was a 41-year-old nurse living in a small town in Ohio with my husband and three kids. Up until then, I took my health for granted.

My husband, Brian and I met in high school and eloped in Las Vegas after having our first child, Austin. Since we had kids so young, all of my twenties were dedicated to being a mom, and my health and body were never my priorities. At 35, I graduated nursing school and it was my job to tell people to be proactive about their health, but I never thought twice about myself. No one in my family had a history of cancer. I was always healthy.

After finding the lump, I went to get a mammogram at a local clinic, which led to an ultrasound. A month later, in March of 2018, I got a biopsy. When that biopsy came back negative for cancer, it was the first time in my life that my body told me something was wrong—I knew the results weren’t accurate. It was a gut feeling. And I listened.

It took six months to get the correct diagnosis.

I went back for ultrasounds every month. My doctor could see the lump was growing, but he was confident with the negative biopsy result. He told me I didn’t have to keep testing, and in July, he told me to come back in a year.

In August, still convinced something was not quite right, I went to the Cleveland Clinic for a second opinion, and a month later, I got a call with a new biopsy result: It was triple-negative breast cancer.

Listen, people are human, doctors are human. They originally made a mistake with me. Mistakes happen all the time. We all make them.

What this new diagnosis meant was that when doctors tested my biopsied breast tissue, they found a specific type of cancer cell that, unlike other breast cancer cells, didn’t have estrogen or progesterone hormone receptors, and didn’t make much or any of the HER2 protein that repairs and grows breast tissue cells. As a result, tests for these two hormones and the protein show up “negative.” Without those receptors or protein, doctors have fewer options for treating the cancerous cells.

After her breast cancer diagnosis, Jennifer Davis was determined to stay positive and get the best treatment possible.