Researchers Discover Personalized mRNA Vaccine To Treat Pancreatic Cancer

One of the worst cancers is Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the most prevalent form of pancreatic cancer. Despite contemporary medicines, only 12% of those diagnosed with this type of cancer will still be alive within five years following therapy. 

As per the National Institute of Health Report, A personalized mRNA cancer-treatment vaccination strategy has been developed by a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre (MSKCC) research team with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Vinod Balachandran directs the team. It is intended to aid in recognizing particular neoantigens in patient pancreatic cancer cells by immune cells. Their novel therapy’s preliminary clinical trial findings were released in Nature on May 10, 2023. 

Following PDAC surgery, the team transmitted tumor samples from 19 patients to collaborators at BioNTech, the business that created one of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. To identify proteins that might elicit an immune response, BioNTech did gene sequencing on the tumors. They then created a customized mRNA vaccination for each patient based on the data they had collected. The maximum number of neoantigens per vaccine was 20. 

18 of the 19 trial participants received customized vaccines with success. It took an average of nine weeks from the time of surgery before the first dose of the vaccine was administered. 

Some vaccination doses could be administered to the 16 volunteers who remained healthy. The immunizations stimulated potent immune cells called T cells in half of these patients, allowing them to recognize the patient’s particular pancreatic cancer.

The study team collaborated with Dr. Benjamin Greenbaum’s lab at MSKCC to create a novel computational method to track the T cells produced following immunization. They discovered through research that blood samples taken before immunization did not contain T cells that could recognize the neoantigens. T cells targeting multiple vaccination neoantigens were present in half of the eight individuals with robust immunological responses. 

The cancer had not returned in patients with a potent T cell response to the vaccine by a year and a half following treatment. However, those whose immune systems did not respond to the vaccine saw a recurrence of the malignancy within an average of just over a year. T cells produced by the vaccine seemed to completely eradicate a tiny tumor that had migrated to the liver in one patient with a high reaction. These findings imply that the pancreatic tumors were controlled by the T cells that the vaccinations activated. 

Balachandran says, “It’s encouraging to see that a personalized vaccine could mobilize the immune system to combat pancreatic cancer—which urgently needs better treatments.” It’s also inspiring since we might be able to treat other dangerous tumors with such customized vaccines. 

More research is required to fully understand why half of the population’s customized vaccines failed to elicit a significant immune response. The researchers are presently planning the start of a larger clinical trial for the vaccine.