A vaccine developed by Chinese scientists to restrain or even kill cancer cells has been approved for clinical research at Shanghai hospitals.

The cancer vaccine, Xinhua says, seeks to trigger the body's own immune system to detect and kill cancer cells.

The vaccine should particularly target liver cancer, the deadliest of all cancers that can kill an end-stage patient within 12 weeks, according to biologists with the Shanghai Zhangjiang Biotech Research Center.

"It's been patented in the US and Australia," said a biologist.

This is the first cancer vaccine independently developed by Chinese scientists to be patented abroad.

The State Food and Drug Administration has approved the vaccine for clinical tests at hospitals in Shanghai.

It will hopefully prolong cancer patients' lives by halting or even reversing tumour growth and has combined the advantages of a cancer vaccine and a monoclonal antibody, says Guo Yajun of the US University of Nebraska.

Cancer vaccine involves a technology to fuse the patient's own cancer cells with a strain of antigen cells.

Clinical research conducted in several countries have proven that such vaccines are effective in halting tumour growth, preventing relapse of cancer and overcoming the side-effects of chemotherapy.

Cancer has become the biggest killer of China's urban dwellers.

Chinese doctors have successfully integrated traditional Chinese medicine with modern medicines in the treatment of cancer and that has shown satisfactory results.

"Kanglaite," an anti-cancer drug a traditional Chinese medicine research institute in Zhejiang province has developed, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration of the US for clinical tests there.

--Indo-Asian News Service