A personalized cancer vaccine made from the DNA of individual patients has produced “really promising” early results.
The innovative jab, created with the advanced technology in the COVID pandemic, is being given to patients after completing the conventional treatment for head and neck cancers. Patients are more likely to get cancer back.
Preliminary data from a clinical trial being conducted at the Clatterbridge Cancer Center show that none of the first eight patients who have received the jab have relapsed, even after several months.
But the cancer has returned in two of the eight patients who were not vaccinated.
The figures are too small to draw firm statistical conclusions.
But Professor Christian Ottensmeier, a consultant medical oncologist and director of clinical research at the center, told Sky News he was “prudently optimistic.”
“I’m very hopeful, yes,” he said. “I’m very excited about that. All the data points in the right direction.”
A small clinical trial of the vaccine in ovarian cancer patients in France and the United States is also showing promising results.
How does the vaccine work?
The jab, codenamed TG4050, is made by a French company called Transgene using a similar technology that produced AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine.
Tumor DNA from an individual patient is cut and pasted into a harmless virus.
When the genetically modified virus is injected into the body, it trains the immune system to be on the lookout for cancer cells, hoping to destroy them at an early stage before there is a lump.
Read more: The history of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine
“The immune system can see things we can’t see on scans,” Professor Ottensmeier said.
“He is much smarter than humans.
“If we can train the immune system to choose those cells that would otherwise cause a relapse at a time when we can’t even see them, then the chances of our patients’ long-term survival are much higher. “.
Doctors are optimistic about the jab because it adapts very carefully to a person’s cancer.
Mutations in the DNA of tumor cells vary between patients. By making a single vaccine for each patient, it should be more effective in targeting rogue cells.
Ten lower doses, 10 more left
Sky News received permission to film Brian Wright receiving the 10th dose of his vaccine at Clatterbridge. He has 10 more doses left by January.
Mr. Wright underwent surgery 16 hours almost exactly a year ago to remove a tumor from the floor of his mouth and replace his lower jaw with a bone extracted from his leg. He then had several weeks of grueling radiation therapy.
He said treatment with the vaccine had no side effects, but that he needed to be convinced to participate in it at first.
“If you’ve had throat cancer,” he said, “and they say they’ll inject you with that cancer, it just sounds …” oh no, you’re not. “
“But then they explained that it won’t return the cancer to you, it will make your body immune to that cancer.”
Thirty patients are participating in the head and neck cancer trial. Half will be given the vaccine as soon as they finish conventional treatment, and the other half will only receive it in case of relapse.
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The COVID pandemic has accelerated the development of vaccine technology that was previously considered highly experimental.
The team of Oxford scientists who developed the AstraZeneca jab is using the same “viral vector” strategy to attack prostate cancer.
And the mRNA technique that supported the Pfizer and Modern COVID vaccines has recently been used with promising results against pancreatic cancer.
Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Oxford team at the Jenner Institute, said: “The pandemic has helped and accelerated the development of a number of new vaccines.
“We learned about its security in billions of people where there used to be thousands, and these are useful security data to have.
“And it means there will be a lot more investment in fields like cancer, where we desperately need better therapies.”