World’s first lung cancer vaccine trials have started in seven countries

Doctors have begun testing the world’s first mRNA lung cancer vaccine on patients as experts praised its “game-changing” potential to save thousands of lives.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, accounting for approximately 1.8 million deaths each year. Survival rates are particularly poor for people with advanced forms of the disease, where tumors have spread.

Now, experts are testing a new shot that instructs the body to seek out and kill cancer cells — and then prevents them from ever coming back. The vaccine, known as BNT116 and made by BioNTech, is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease.

The Phase 1 clinical trial, the first-in-human study of BNT116, has started at 34 research sites in seven countries: the UK, US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey.

The UK has six sites, located in England and Wales. The first British patient to receive the vaccine received their first dose on Tuesday.

In total, around 130 patients – from early stages before surgery or radiotherapy, to late-stage disease or recurrent cancer – will be enrolled to receive the jab alongside immunotherapy. Around 20 will come from the UK.

The jab uses messenger RNA (mRNA), similar to Covid-19 vaccines, and works by confronting the immune system with NSCLC tumour markers to prepare the body to fight cancer cells that express these markers.

The goal is to boost a person’s immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells unaffected, unlike chemotherapy.

“We are now entering a very exciting new era of clinical trials of mRNA-based immunotherapy to investigate the treatment of lung cancer,” said Prof Siow Ming Lee, a consultant medical oncologist at University College London hospitals NHS foundation trust (UCLH), which is leading the research in the UK.

“It’s easy to deliver and you can select specific antigens in the cancer cell and then target them. This technology is the next big thing in cancer treatment.”

Janusz Racz, 67, from London, was the first person to receive the vaccine in the UK. He was diagnosed in May and began chemotherapy and radiotherapy shortly afterwards.

The scientist, who specializes in AI, said his profession inspired him to take part in the trial. “I am also a scientist and I understand that the progress of science – especially in medicine – lies in people agreeing to take part in such studies,” he said.

He added: “It would be very useful for me because it is a new method that is not available to other patients and it could help me get rid of the cancer.

“And I can also be part of the team that can provide the proof of concept for this new methodology. And the faster it is implemented around the world, the more people will be saved.”

Racz received six consecutive injections five minutes apart, spread over 30 minutes, on Tuesday at the National Institute for Health Research UCLH Clinical Research Facility.

Each shot contained different strands of RNA. He will receive the vaccine every week for six consecutive weeks, and then every three weeks for 54 weeks.

Lee said: “We hope that adding this extra treatment will prevent the cancer from coming back, because in lung cancer patients the cancer often comes back, even after surgery and radiation.”

He added: “I’ve been doing lung cancer research for 40 years. When I started in the 1990s, no one believed chemotherapy worked.

“We now know that about 20-30% (of patients) survive with stage 4 with immunotherapy and now we want to improve survival rates. So hopefully this mRNA vaccine, on top of immunotherapy, can give that extra boost.

“We hope to move on to phase 2, phase 3, and then we hope it becomes the standard of care worldwide and saves many lung cancer patients.”

The Guardian reported in May that thousands of patients in England would be fast-tracked into groundbreaking cancer vaccine trials in a revolutionary NHS “matchmaking” programme, a world-first, to save lives.

Patients who meet the eligibility criteria will be given access to clinical trials for the vaccines through this scheme. According to experts, these vaccines represent a new era in cancer treatment.

Lord Vallance, the science minister, welcomed the launch of the lung cancer vaccine trial. “This approach has the potential to save thousands of lives diagnosed with lung cancer every year,” he said. “We are supporting our researchers so that they continue to be an integral part of projects that deliver breakthrough therapies such as this one.”

Racz hopes that once his treatment is over, he will be able to start running again and realise his dream of running the London Marathon.