MRNA vaccine shows promises in pancreatic cancer test

An MRNA -based cancer vaccine has shown impressive results in a small test in patients with pancreatic cancer, indicating that the vaccine can stimulate a long -term immune response that reduces the risk of recurrence of after surgery.

New results from the clinical clinical testing phase of clinical testing of the Cevumeran Autogenic Vaccine were published in the newspaper Nature. They show that MRNA vaccines, in combination with another type of immunotherapy called an immune control point inhibitor stimulated an immune response against the protein found in the tumor. These immune cells were detected in patients with test up to four years after treatment, indicating that although the MRNA vaccines themselves are short-lived in the body, anti-tumor immune cells stimulated by them may last for years.

“The latest data from the Phase 1 trial are encouraging,” said Vinod Balachandran, MD, surgeon-scientist from the Sloan Kettering Memorial Center in New York and the main trial investigator. “They suggest that this investigative therapeutic MRNA vaccine can mobilize T-tumor cells that can recognize pancreatic cancers as foreigners, potentially years after vaccination,” said Balachandran, also a senior author of the new publication.

Cancer vaccines do not work like vaccines for infectious diseases such as Covid-19 or measles. These vaccines are generally given to preventive people to reduce the chance of being ill, or seriously ill by other viruses, bacteria or microorganisms. Cancer vaccines are given to people who already have cancer and encourage the immune system to attack the tumor.

Like there are different MRNA vaccines for Covid-19, adapted with different variants of the virus, MRNA vaccines used in court were personalized for each patient. Using information on genetic sequences, researchers designed an MRNA vaccine to stimulate the immune system against proteins called neoantigens specially present in each patient’s tumor. An early report on the study showed that vaccines had no major side effects and about half of the patients in court had a detectable immune response.

“For patients with pancreatic cancer, our latest results continue to support the access to the use of MRNA personalized vaccines to target neoantigens in each patient’s tumor,” Balachandran said. “If you can do this in pancreatic cancer, you may theoretically be able to develop therapeutic vaccines for other types of cancer.”

Although the results should be carefully interpreted as the trial included only a small number of patients, of whom only half responded, the results are still exciting as the pancreatic cancer has a shameful surviving rate, with only 13% of living patients 5-year or more after diagnosis. Regular treatments such as surgery and chemotherapy are of limited benefit and most patients experience relapse of their disease. Of the 8 patients who initially responded to the MRNA vaccine, 6 remain without cancer at the time of studying.

MRNA-based cancer vaccines were already developing a few years before Pandemia Covid-19 brought technology around the world. As well as pancreatic cancer, they are in evidence for several different types of cancer, including skin cancer, kidney cancer, brain cancer and breast cancer.

The initial results of the MRNA vaccine in pancreatic cancer were promising enough to have much greater phase test of 260 patients is already developing. Patients will be randomized into two groups, patients in one will receive operations followed by conventional chemotherapy treatment and the other will receive surgery, a personalized MRNA vaccine and also an immune control point to help the immune response After the vaccine. The study is expected to be completed in 2029, but temporary results should be available at several points before this while researchers follow the preliminary results of the trial.