Marilyn Horne is cancer free

As famed mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne turns 74 today, she adds another milestone to her long list of accolades: “Prima donna -- and survivor.”

Two years after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the same disease that killed her friend and fellow opera star Luciano Pavarotti, she is said to be free of it. And for the first time, she is talking publicly about her experimental cancer treatment in the hope that it might help others.

Horne, who is director of the voice program at Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, was at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center last week, getting another dose of a new cancer vaccine that has so far been administered to only about 200 people.

Horne began receiving the injections of lab-grown pancreatic cancer cells in early 2007, after surgery to remove the tumor. The vaccine has been genetically modified with an immune-boosting gene to tackle any lingering malignant cells.

She was injected every two months for a half-year, and is now scheduled to get additional doses twice a year.