Index – Tech-Science – Cancer research before a huge breakthrough

Doctors have launched the world’s first personalized cancer treatment mRNAtrial of its vaccine against melanoma in hundreds of patients, while experts hailed the potential for a major breakthrough in curing cancer once and for all. Melanoma affects about 132,000 people worldwide every year, and surgery is currently the main treatment method, although sometimes radiation therapy, drugs and chemotherapy are also used, wrote the The Guardian.

Experts are now testing a new vaccine, tailored to each patient, that tells the body to hunt down cancer cells so that the disease never returns. A phase 2 study found that the vaccine dramatically reduced the risk of the cancer returning in melanoma patients. The final phase 3 trial, led by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH), has now started.

Heather Shaw, the national coordinator of the study, said that the vaccine is suitable for treating melanoma patients and that the new vaccine is also being tested in other cancers, including lung, bladder and kidney cancer.

It’s one of the most exciting we’ve seen in a long time

Shaw said. “It’s a very finely honed tool. You’re able to sit there and tell patients that you’re offering them something that’s practically a Michelin-starred restaurant compared to McDonald’s—patients are very excited about that.”

Individualized healing

The vaccine is an individualized neoantigen therapy. It is designed to prime the immune system to fight the patient’s specific type of cancer and tumor. The vaccine, known as mRNA-4157 (V940), targets tumor neoantigens developed by the patient’s tumors. These are markers on the tumor that the immune system can potentially recognize.

The vaccine carries the coding of up to 34 neoantigens and activates an anti-tumor immune response based on the unique mutations of the patient’s tumor. For personalization, a tumor sample is taken during the patient’s surgery, followed by DNA sequencing and artificial intelligence.

“It’s a very individualized therapy, and in some ways it’s much smarter than a vaccine,” Shaw said. “It’s completely tailored to the patient, we couldn’t give this to the next patient in line because we couldn’t expect it to work.” They may have some new antigens in common, but they probably have their own, very individual new antigens that are important to their tumor, and so it’s really just for that individual.”

According to Shaw, the ultimate goal is to permanently cure patients of cancer.

I think there is really hope that these will be game changers in immunotherapy

– He told.

Encouraging results

Phase 2 data showed that patients with severe, high-risk melanoma who received this vaccine along with Keytruda immunotherapy were almost half as likely (49 percent) to die or have their cancer come back after three years than those who , who only received Keytruda.

A wider range of patients will now be included in the phase 3 global trial, with the aim of enrolling approximately 1,100 people. The UK arm aims to recruit at least 60-70 patients across eight centres, including London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Leeds.

One of UCLH’s first patients is Steve Young, 52, from Stevenage, Hertfordshire. “I’m really, really excited,” he said. “This is my best chance to stop the cancer.”

(Cover photo: A woman works on a lung cancer vaccine at the Ose Immunotherapeutics laboratory in Nantes on October 1, 2023. Photo: Loic Venance / AFP)