New Personalized Vaccine May Treat Pancreatic Cancer

A new study published in the journal Nature found that a personalized vaccine, named autogene cevumeran, is showing promising results for treating pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest malignancies. The approach uses messenger RNA (mRNA) technology to create a therapeutic cancer vaccine that has shown potential to stimulate the immune system and possibly reduce the risk of the disease returning after surgery.

Therapeutic cancer vaccines are designed to help the immune system recognize and fight existing cancer. Unlike preventive vaccines (such as the HPV vaccine, which protects against certain cancers), they are given to people who already have cancer. These vaccines work by stimulating the body’s immune response against cancer cells, often by training immune cells (like T cells) to target specific tumor proteins. In some cases, therapeutic cancer vaccines are personalized, like this one, meaning they are made using a patient’s own cancer cells or antigens.

In the Phase I clinical trial that involved 16 patients, the vaccine showed it could activate tumor-specific immune cells, which remained in the body for nearly four years in some patients. It also showed that patients who had an immune response to the vaccine had a reduced risk of their cancer returning after three years, compared to those whose immune systems did not respond.

“The latest data from the Phase I trial are encouraging,” said Vinod Balachandran, MD, a pancreatic cancer surgeon-scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre. “They suggest this investigational therapeutic mRNA vaccine can mobilize anti-tumor T cells that may recognize pancreatic cancers as foreign, potentially years after vaccination.”

A Phase II clinical trial will study the effect and safety of autogene cevumeran on a larger patient group. “Given the data from our Phase I trial, we are excited to evaluate therapeutic mRNA cancer vaccines in more pancreatic cancer patients,” said Dr. Balachandran.