Glimmers of hope for cancer vaccines as two neoantigen shots hit the mark stat : FierceBiotech

Efforts to develop effective, personalized Cancer vaccines have been largely unsuccessful to date, but two phase 1 studies suggest the tide could be turning. "This research shows that it is feasible to produce peptide-based personalized neoantigen vaccines, and these vaccines can generate immune responses with reliability and potency," Wu said. One of the studies, led by Catherine Wu, M.D., at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, put a personalized "neoantigen" vaccine developed by Fierce 15 company Neon Therapeutics through its paces. Neoantigen vaccines are a new form of personalized immunotherapy in which antigens that are found in diseased tissues but not normally in healthy patients are used to develop targeted vaccines. "Each patient developed immune responses against multiple vaccine targets," said Sahin, who is founder and CEO of BioNTech.




Personalised vaccines have been used to successfully treat melanoma (skin cancer) patients in two small studies. Researchers used unique differences in each patient's cancer to design vaccines to spur the immune system into action. "The promising results show that personalised cancer vaccines designed to treat skin cancer are safe to use, and that for some patients, they can successfully harness the power of the body's own immune system to kill cancer cells," Pickworth added. The results will be seen as another step towards personalised therapies, though vaccines are some way off being used as a standard treatment. The first study included 13 patients who had stage III or IV melanoma, 8 of whom had no detectable cancer after surgery.

Custom cancer vaccines safely fight and kill tumors in early human trials

Then they identified unique mutations that have amassed in the patients' cancer cells but are absent in their healthy cells. For instance, some current cancer immunotherapies work by simply disabling proteins that cancer cells use to hide from immune responses. In this case, immune cells can take up the RNA and create peptide fragments to present to T cells. In two early clinical trials involving 19 patients with skin cancer, personalized vaccines appeared safe and effective at spurring immune responses to attack and destroy tumors. Immune cells are naturally equipped to do it; they just need a little nudge.


collected by :Lucy William

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