Doctor on the cusp of a cancer cure: Nobel Prize-winning oncologist whose discovery means deadly disease could be treated with a vaccine in coming years

When her second-grade teacher asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Catherine Wu took a photo of herself “creating a cure for cancer.”

Although that is the dream of many doctors who delve into oncology, it is becoming reality for her.

Dr. Wu, now an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, has pioneered the research that has fueled a new frontier of “personalized cancer vaccines,” delivering unprecedented levels of protection in clinical trials.

Everyone’s cancer is genetically unique to them, and Dr. Wu and her team discovered how to identify these mutations and use the body to fight them.

By using this genetic data and programming it into vaccines, the body can be turned into a powerful cancer-killing machine.

Results from early studies show that vaccines are showing increasing promise for difficult-to-treat cancers, such as pancreatic cancer, and that they can be used for many of the 200 types of cancer.

Her work has already won a Nobel Prize for her ‘decisive contributions’ to cancer.

Dr. A New York native, Wu’s obsession with the immune system began after she studied bone marrow transplants as a medical intern and saw firsthand how they regenerated the blood and immune system to tackle cancer.

“I had had some really formative academic experiences that made me quite interested in the power of immunology,” she told CNN.

‘There before my eyes were people being cured of their leukemia because of the mobilization of the immune response.’

The idea of ​​a cancer vaccine has been around for decades, but many have failed in the past because the right target hasn’t been found.

Dr. Wu was able to find the key to making cancer vaccines work. Together with her team, she discovered how to identify the unique neoantigens of tumors.

These are proteins that form on cancer cells when mutations occur.

These tumor neoantigens can be identified as foreign by the immune system’s T cells and then attacked.

Dr. Wu identified patients’ neoantigens by sequencing DNA from healthy cells and cancer cells.

Copies of the neoantigens were then inserted into a custom-made vaccine to trigger the immune system to attack the cancer cells.

Dr. Wu was determined to test the technology in a trial in patients with advanced melanoma.

But the suggestion that each patient in the trial would receive a personalized vaccine was difficult for the FDA to understand, because they would typically require the vaccine to be tested on animals first.

Dr. Wu said, “That room was packed. It was the first (trial) of its kind, and it included people from many different offices. Our argument was, “This is personal, whatever we do to an animal doesn’t really match the human – so why even go that route?”

After receiving FDA approval, six patients with advanced melanoma were vaccinated with a seven-dose course of individualized neoantigen vaccines.

The groundbreaking results, published in Nature in 2017, showed that some of the patients’ immune cells were activated and their tumor cells attacked.

Four years later, a follow-up study in 2021 showed that the immune responses had worked to keep the cancer cells at bay.

Dr. Wu said, “I am grateful to all the patients who participated in our trial because they are… active partners.

‘It’s hard enough to have a treatment, but then to have to have a treatment where the benefit is unknown, and to be willing to get all the extras we need to do this kind of research . There are more tests, there are more blood draws, there are more biopsies.”

Dr. Wu and her team, like other major pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and Moderna, have delved further into cancer vaccine research.

Trials are now underway for pancreatic and lung cancer.

Dr. Wu said, “My belief is that there are many roads to Rome. I think there are many different delivery modes, but each delivery approach can be optimized with different bells and whistles.

‘There needs to be investment in how we can best make that delivery approach work. And right now there is a huge appetite for mRNA, fueled by our pandemic.”

mRNA vaccines provide instructions to cells to produce the correct proteins and contain a small piece of a protein from the cancer cell.

Meanwhile, a new course of therapy is being hailed as a breakthrough in cancer treatment.

Similar to cancer vaccines, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) use immune cells from a patient’s tumors to mount a long-lasting defense.

Last week, the FDA approved a TIL for advanced melanoma called Amtagvi.

It is given as an infusion into a vein in the hospital. The drug works by extracting and then replicating a type of white blood cell, called T cells, taken from a patient’s tumor.

Patrick Hwu, CEO of Moffitt Cancer Center, told Axios, “This is the tip of the iceberg of what TIL can bring to the future of medicine.”