A personalized mrna vaccine for pancreatic cancer has demonstrated early promise in a small phase 1 study … [+]
A mrna -based cancer vaccine has shown impressive results in a small study in patients with pancreatic cancer, which shows that the vaccine can stimulate an immune response in the long term that reduces the risk of recurrence of cancer after surgery.
New results of the Phase I Clinical Test Testing MRNA vaccine Autogenic Cevumeran was published in the magazine Nature. They show that the MRNA vaccines, in combination with another type of immunotherapy called an immune control piper, stimulated an immune response against proteins found on the tumor. These immune cells were detected in test patients up to four years after the treatment, which shows that although mrna vaccines themselves are short-lived in the body, they can last for years stimulated anti-tumor immune cells.
“The latest data from the 1-study phase are encouraging,” said Vinod Balacandran, MD, surgeon scientist of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and lead researcher of the test. “They suggest that this research therapeutic MRNA vaccine can mobilize anti-tumor T cells that can recognize pancreatic cancer as foreign, possibly years after vaccination,” said Balacandran, also senior author of the new publication.
Cancer vaccines do not work such as vaccines for infectious diseases such as COVID-19 or measles. These vaccines are generally given to people preventively to reduce the chance that they will get sick, or seriously ill from viruses, bacteria or other microorganisms. Cancer vaccines are given to people who already have cancer and encourage the immune system to attack the tumor.
Just as there are different formulations of MRNA vaccines for COVID-19, adapted to various virus variants, the MRNA vaccines used in the test for each patient were personalized. With the help of genetic sequencing information, researchers designed an MRNA vaccine to stimulate the immune system against proteins called neoantigenes that are specifically present on the tumor of each patient. A Previously report During the study showed that the vaccines had no important side effects and that about half of the patients had a detectable immune response during the study.
“For patients with pancreatic cancer, our newest results remain the approach to using personalized mrna vaccins to focus on neoantigenes in the tumor of every patient,” said Balacandran. “If you can do this with pancreatic cancer, you can theoretically develop therapeutic vaccines for other types of cancer.”
Although the results must be interpreted with caution, since the study was only a small number of patients, only half of which responded, the results are still exciting because pancreatic cancer has a gloomy survival percentage, with alone 13% of patients Living 5 years or more after diagnosis. Regular treatments such as surgery and chemotherapy are of a limited advantage and most patients experience relapse of their illness. Of the 8 patients who initially responded to the MRNA vaccine, 6 cancer -free remain at the time of the follow -up of the study.
MRNA-based cancer vaccines had been developing for several years before the COVID-19 Pandemie brought the technology worldwide attention. In addition to pancreatic cancer, they are in studies for different types of cancer, including cancerkidney cancer, brain cancer And breast cancer.
The first results of the MRNA vaccine in pancreatic cancer were promising enough than a much larger one Phase 2 study of 260 patients is already underway. Patients are randomized in two groups, patients in one get surgery followed by conventional chemotherapy treatment and the other gets surgery, a personalized mrna vaccine and also an immune control pammer medicine to help the immune response after the vaccine. The study is expected to end in 2029, but interim results must be available on different points, because researchers follow the provisional results of the test.