CLEVELAND (WJW) — The Cleveland Clinic launched a new study for a vaccine intended to prevent the most aggressive and deadly form of breast cancer: triple-negative.

The first phase of the trial will determine the maximum dosage for patients with early-stage triple-negative breast cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new drug for the vaccine.

The study includes 18 to 24 patients who completed treatment for early-stage triple-negative breast cancer within the past three years and are currently tumor-free, but at high risk for recurrence. The participants will receive three vaccinations, each two weeks apart. The study will be finished in September 2022.

“We are hopeful that this research will lead to more advanced trials to determine the effectiveness of the vaccine against this highly aggressive type of breast cancer,” said G. Thomas Budd, M.D., of Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute and principal investigator of the study.

“Long term, we are hoping that this can be a true preventive vaccine that would be administered to healthy women to prevent them from developing triple-negative breast cancer, the form of breast cancer for which we have the least effective treatments.”

Triple-negative breast cancer makes up about 10 to 15 percent of breast cancer, but causes a disproportionately high number of deaths, the Cleveland Clinic said. It’s twice as likely to occur in African-American women.