A breakthrough vaccine against pancreatic cancer prevented the disease from returning in half of the patients who received it.
The mRNA vaccines were developed by BioNTech, which also used the same technology to make the widely used Pfizer Covid injection, and are individually tailored for each recipient. Each dose costs about $100,000 to produce, the company said.
In their studies, 16 patients who had previously had pancreatic cancer but had their tumors surgically removed received the vaccine.
Half of the patients showed an increased number of T cells, white blood cells responsible for fighting disease. None of those patients had the cancer return during the 18-month period that researchers followed them.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of the disease and is very likely to recur even after remission. This has led to increased focus on creating treatments and screening measures to detect and control the disease.
BioNTech has led research into a breakthrough vaccine for pancreatic cancer. It prevented the deadly disease from returning in 50 percent of patients who got it (file photo)
The development of the vaccine is an international project, in which doctors at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City are collaborating with BioNTech of Germany and the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche.
For the research, published Wednesday in the journal NatureMemorial Sloan researchers collected cells from the tumors of more than a dozen patients.
They sent the sample to Germany, where BioNTech labs would analyze the cancer cells and create a vaccine to fight them.
Scientists then developed an mRNA vaccine that would specifically target proteins from that person’s cancer.
After a person gets the shot, their body makes a version of the protein that prompts the immune system to clear it.
By doing this, the body would now develop antibodies trained to fight against that protein.
The body’s defenses would also be alert to that protein. This means that if the cancer returns, the body will fight it quickly and prevent it from spreading.
This is also how the mRNA Covid vaccines worked as they would create a synthetic version of the virus’s spike protein in the body to train the immune system.
Then, at Memorial Sloan, patients would undergo surgery to remove cancerous growths from their bodies.
Nine weeks after a successful operation, they received the vaccine through an IV. Blood samples were taken three days later to determine whether the medication had successfully generated new anti-cancer antibodies.
It did this in eight patients, with the other half of the study group experiencing no immune response.
Each patient continued chemotherapy and was regularly checked by doctors to screen for whether their cancer had returned.
Over the next 18 months, none of the patients whose immune response elicited an immune response had a recurrence of the cancer.
Further investigation revealed that one of the patients even had the vaccine’s antibodies successfully fend off abnormal growths in a person’s liver.
“These data are extremely promising and will provide the framework for a planned further clinical trial,” Nature wrote.
By comparison, in all the other eight, the cancer came back during that period, called a recurrence. It took an average of 13 months for the cancer to return.
Typically, the disease will recur in about 80 percent of patients who have it surgically removed.
This vaccine has sparked hope among doctors, as finding a vaccine against cancer has long been a goal of the medical profession.
Breakthroughs in mRNA technology and an increased focus on its use in medicine are emerging from the Covid pandemic.
BioNTech, Moderna and other companies have all invested heavily in using mRNA for more than just the Covid shots.
Moderna has seen early success in its own trials for a cancer vaccine.
Trials are currently underway for mRNA recordings to prevent heart failure, HIV, cancer and other conditions.
However, this vaccine is not without flaws. In this trial, it was only effective in half of the patients – providing virtually no benefit to the others.
Each shot also comes with a hefty price tag, with BioNTech spending a six-figure sum on each. This likely means that the shot would be prohibitively expensive for consumers if it were to hit the market.
In addition, it is only effective for people whose pancreatic cancer is detected at such an early stage that it can still be surgically removed.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest for doctors to get to grips with.
There are no single ways to screen for it and it causes mild symptoms that are often overlooked in the early stages.
As a result, most cases are not diagnosed until they have already spread to other organs, making it difficult to treat and almost always fatal.
The National Cancer Institute estimates that 64,050 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year and will be responsible for 50,550 deaths.
The American Society of Clinical Oncology estimates that 56 percent of all people diagnosed die from the disease.
If the cancer spreads to another part of the body — called metastasis — the survival rate drops to just three percent.