Vaccines generated using the cells left over after tumour removal surgery could help to keep patients from redeveloping cancer.
All nine patients in a Phase I investigator-led trial of a personalised kidney cancer vaccine have successfully generated anti-cancer immune responses following tumour removal surgery.
Researchers from the US-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute administered the NeoVax personalised cancer vaccine to all nine patients with stage III or IV clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) following tumour removal surgery.
Results published this week in the journal Nature saw all nine patients involved in the trial (NCT02950766) remaining cancer-free at the cut-off point of 34.7 months.
The vaccines are personalised by way of neoantigens extracted from the patient’s tumour tissue during tumour removal surgery, with predictive algorithms used to determine which neoantigens to include in the vaccine based on the likelihood of inducing an immune response. The vaccine then teaches the patient’s body to combat leftover cancer cells and prevent them from resurfacing.
Dr Patrick Ott, director of the Center for Cancer Vaccines at the Dana-Farber Institute, said: “We observed a rapid, substantial and durable expansion of new T-cell clones related to the vaccine.
“These results support the feasibility of creating a highly immunogenic personalised neoantigen vaccine in a lower mutation burden tumour and are encouraging, though larger scale studies will be required to fully understand the clinical efficacy of this approach.”
Also read: Pancreatic cancer: Rising incidence among young people
Source: clinicaltrialsarena.com
