The world’s first personalized mRNA melanoma vaccine is being tested in UK patients.
The “game-changing” vaccine also has the potential to shut down the bladder, lungs and kidneys. cancer.
It is tailor-made for each person and tells the body to identify cancer cells and prevent the disease from returning.
A second stage trial found it significantly reduced the risk of cancer recurrence in melanoma patients and a final trial has now been launched.
University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) is leading the phase.
Dr Heather Shaw, the trial’s coordinating investigator, said it was “one of the most exciting things we’ve seen in a very long time”.
“It’s a very sophisticated tool,” she said.
“To be able to sit there and tell your patients that you’re offering them something that’s effectively like Bray’s Fat Duck versus McDonald’s – it’s that level of cordon bleu happening to them.
“These things are extremely technical and finely generated for the patient. Patients are really excited about this.”
The vaccine is an individualized neoantigen therapy (INT) and can trigger the immune system to fight the patient’s specific cancer type.
To create the personalized therapy, a tumor sample is taken and its DNA is sequenced – with artificial intelligence also playing a role.
Dr Shaw said: “This is very much an individualized therapy and it is much smarter in some senses than a vaccine.
“It’s absolutely tailor-made for the patient; you couldn’t give it to the next patient in the queue, because you wouldn’t expect it to work. »
She added: “I think there is real hope that these products will be a game changer in immunotherapy. »
The goal is to cure the cancer and eradicate any unwanted cells that might not be visible on scans.
The phase two trial found that people with high-risk melanomas who received the vaccine – in combination with the immunotherapy drug Keytruda – were about half as likely (49%) to die or lose their cancer relapse after three years than those who had just received Keytruda.
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The global phase three trial will include a wider range of patients and researchers hope to recruit around 1,100 people.
At least 60 to 70 patients across eight UK centers are expected to be recruited and the combination of twin therapies will also be tested in lung, bladder and kidney cancer.
Professor Lawrence Young, of the University of Warwick, called it “one of the most exciting developments in modern cancer therapy”.
“Interest in cancer vaccines has been revived in recent years thanks to a better understanding of how the body controls immune responses and by the advent of mRNA vaccines, making the development of a vaccine based on the immune profile of a patient’s tumor is much simpler,” said Professor Young.
“We hope that this approach can be extended to other cancers such as lung and colon.”
