2023-05-10 17:32:53
A phase 1 clinical trial has tested personalized mRNA vaccines against the most frequent type of pancreatic cancer with a particularly poor prognosis. The treatment was given to 16 people and half of them showed an immune response to the vaccine, which was associated with a better prognosis. The results are published in the journal «Nature».
This is pancreatic cancer with low survival rates, which have remained at 12% in the last 60 years. Until now, a combination of surgical and medicinal therapies has been successful in delaying recurrence, but their success rates are low.
Some recent publications suggest that most of these tumors harbor elevated levels of neoantigens, which are cell surface proteins that can arise on the surface of tumors following certain types of DNA mutations.
These proteins can be the object of personalized vaccine therapies in order to enhance the activity of T cells and improve the results according to the study published in «Nature».
In this phase I clinical trial, Vinod Balachandran’s team from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center de New York (USA) administered a personalized mRNA vaccine, called adjuvant autogenic cevumeran, in combination with chemotherapy and immunotherapy in 16 patients.
Results showed substantial T cell responses in 50% of patients, indicating that the vaccine may induce an enhanced immune response.
After 18 months of follow-up, elevated immune responses in patients correlated with longer times to relapse, whereas vaccine-nonresponders progressed a median of 13.4 months after baseline evaluation.
These results demonstrate the potential of individualized mRNA vaccines in the treatment of this tumor, in addition to providing evidence of their overall efficacy as a therapeutic tool in the treatment of the disease. The authors note that despite the limited sample size, these early results suggest that larger studies of this type of pancreatic cancer vaccine are warranted.
This trial has given rise to another in phase 2, already underway and in which several Spanish centers are participating, including the one coordinated by Ignacio Melero, Professor of Immunology at the University of Navarra, CIMA researcher and co-director of the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy of the University of Navarra Clinic.
These early results indicate that larger studies of this type of vaccine for pancreatic cancer are warranted.
The data, he points out to the Science Media Center, coincide with the presentation at the AACR congress of data from a trial of Moderna’s personalized vaccines in combination with anti-PD1 for advanced melanomas with positive results.
“Personalized mRNA vaccines combined with immunomodulation are clear candidates to dominate treatments in oncology, especially applied around surgery with curative intent,” adds Melero.
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