A personalized cancer vaccine made from individual patients’ own DNA has produced “really encouraging” early results.
The revolutionary injection, created using technology perfected in the COVID pandemic, is administered to patients after they have completed conventional treatment for head and neck cancer. Patients have a high chance of the cancer returning.
Preliminary data from a clinical trial being run at The Clatterbridge Cancer Center shows that none of the first eight patients given the injection had relapsed, even after several months.
But the cancer came back in two of eight patients who were not immunized.
The numbers are too small to draw any definite statistical conclusions.
But Professor Christian Ottenmaier, consultant medical oncologist and director of clinical research at the centre, told Sky News he was “cautiously optimistic”.
“I’m really hopeful, yeah,” he said. “I’m very excited about it. All the data points in the right direction.”
A small clinical trial of the vaccine in ovarian cancer patients in France and the US also showed promising results.
How does the vaccine work?
The jab, codenamed TG4050, was made by a French company called Transgene, using similar technology to the one that makes AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine.
DNA from an individual patient’s tumor is cut out and inserted into a harmless virus.
When the genetically engineered virus is injected into the body, it trains the immune system to watch for cancer cells, hopefully killing them at an early stage, before there’s even a lump.
Read more: Oxford-AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine story
“The immune system can see things that we can’t see on a scan,” Prof. Ottenmaier said.
“It is much smarter than humans.
“If we can train the immune system to select those cells that would otherwise lead to relapse at a time when we can’t even see them, then the chances of long-term survival for our patients are much higher.”
Doctors are optimistic about the jab because it is so carefully tailored to an individual’s cancer.
Mutations in the DNA of tumor cells vary between patients. By creating a unique vaccine for each patient, it should be more effective at targeting rogue cells.
Ten reduced doses, 10 more to go
Sky News was granted permission to film Brian Wright receiving the 10th dose of his vaccine in Clatterbridge. From today until January, he has 10 more doses to go.
Mr Wright underwent a 16-hour operation almost exactly a year ago to remove a tumor from the floor of his mouth and replace his lower jaw with bone taken from his leg. He then had several weeks of grueling radiotherapy.
He said the vaccine treatment has no side effects, but he must first be convinced to participate.
“If you’ve had cancer in your throat,” he said, “and they say they’re going to inject you with that cancer, it just sounds like … ‘oh no, you haven’t.’
“But then they explained that it wouldn’t bring your cancer back, it would 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 receive it only when relapses occur.
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The COVID pandemic has accelerated the development of vaccine technology, once considered highly experimental.
The team of Oxford scientists that developed the AstraZeneca jab used the same “viral vector” strategy to target prostate cancer.
And the mRNA technique that underlies Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID vaccines has recently been used with encouraging 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 range of new vaccines.
“We’ve learned about their safety in billions of people, whereas before it was in the thousands, and that’s useful safety data.”
“And that means there will be a lot more investment in areas like cancer where we desperately need better therapies.”
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