COVID-19 vaccine technology has proven successful in the fight against cancer
This is according to Reuters.
It is noted that significant breakthroughs in the development of cancer vaccines, considered one of the most dynamic areas of cancer research, are taking place against a backdrop of US officials sending mixed signals regarding the benefits and safety of this technology.
This month, at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, more than 130 studies on cancer vaccines were presented.
The meeting was attended by leading vaccine developers, including BioNTech, Moderna, Merck and Pfizer.
The companies are testing mRNA-based drugs in nine large and medium-sized clinical trials for lung, kidney, bladder and pancreatic cancer, and may receive the first results of their large confirmatory trial for melanoma as early as this year.
Reuters notes that cancer mRNA vaccines are being developed as personalised treatments: a tumour sample is taken from the patient, unique mutations are identified, and an mRNA vaccine is created specifically for their condition to prevent recurrence.
Therefore, although cuts to federal grants in the US are creating obstacles for academic institutions, large pharmaceutical companies are driving the technology forward on a global scale, notably by scaling up trials in Europe and Asia.
From early discovery to potential breakthrough
Ten years ago, Dr Vinod Balachandran of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center became one of the first scientists to recognise the potential of mRNA for treating even the deadliest forms of cancer.
He noticed that, in rare cases, some patients managed to survive pancreatic cancer – a disease that scientists considered ‘invisible’ to the immune system.
Research showed that in these cases, the patients’ immune systems were able to recognise and attack their tumours. The question was how to make this phenomenon widespread.
Balachandran believed that mRNA, which can be produced very quickly, could be used to create personalised vaccines based on specific mutations detected exclusively in patients’ tumours following surgery.
In December 2019, the first phase of clinical trials began, involving 16 patients. The study tested a combination of chemotherapy, the immunotherapy drug Tecentriq from Roche, and a bespoke mRNA vaccine from BioNTech, which targeted mutated proteins based on patients’ individual tumours.
At a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in April, Balachandran reported that of the eight pancreatic cancer patients whose immune systems responded to the vaccine, seven were still alive six years later.
A global Phase 2 trial involving 260 patients is currently underway, with the aim of confirming these results.
The drug is administered intravenously to rapidly stimulate the immune system to fight fast-growing brain cancer, for which the five-year survival rate is less than 7%.
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