The first results of a clinical trial with 16 volunteers emerged that a experimental messenger RNA vaccine and personalized induce substantial immune response and potentially delay relapse of patients in a form of pancreatic cancerpancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

It does this when used with other treatments, such as chemotherapy, surgery, and a type of immunotherapy. The results of the phase 1 clinical trial are published in the journal Nature, in an article led by researchers from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (United States).

The study shows that personalized messenger RNA vaccines «promising results» in pancreatic cancer, says Nature.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma have low survival rates. A combination of surgical and medical therapies can delay recurrence, but their success rates are low, the journal recalls.

Recent literature suggests that most of these cancers harbor elevated levels of neoantigenswhich are cell surface proteins that can arise on the surface of tumors behind certain types of DNA clumps.

These proteins can be subject to personalized vaccine therapies to enhance T-cell activity and improve results.

As summarized by the authors in their article: pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is lethal in the 88 percent of patientshowever, it harbors affected-derived T-cell neoantigens that are suitable for vaccines.

Induction of an enhanced immune response

In this phase 1 clinical trial, Vinod Balachandran and his team administer a personalized messenger RNA vaccine in combination with chemotherapy and immunotherapy to 16 patients. The vaccine is prepared according to the characteristics of each patient’s tumor.

they observed substantial T cell responses in 50 percent of them, «indicating that the the vaccine can induce an enhanced immune response«.

At 18-month follow-up, patients with vaccine-expanded T cells have a longer median recurrence-free survival compared with patients without vaccine-expanded T cells (13.4 months).

These results demonstrate the potential of individualized messenger RNA vaccines (mRNA) in the treatment of this pancreatic cancer, in addition to providing evidence of its general efficacy as a therapeutic tool in the treatment of the disease.

This type of mRNA vaccines put an end to covid-19a technology that, however, was initially conceived to try to develop vaccines against cancer.

It is a fertile field of research thanks to better knowledge of the immune system and technical developments.

Trial prompts larger studies

The authors note that, despite the limited sample size, these first results indicate that Larger studies of this type are warranted. prepared.

For Manel Juan, head of the Immunology Service at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, ​​»the study is very well designed and its scientific quality is unquestionable.»

«Shows something that has already been suggested many times before (with less robust data), how personalized vaccination with tumor hardening mRNA is effective in inducing a response and can, at a minimum, the increases in survival periods«, according to this researcher, who does not participate in the work.

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This study confirms that it can generate responses with clearly very reduced harmful effects against one of the tumors with the highest mortality, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, tells Science Media Center Spain.

«The job fits perfectly with him every time larger number of papers showing evidence of these treatments. The main contribution is that it achieves this in a tumor that is generally considered not very reactive to immunotherapy and reconfirms to all of us who consider that immunotherapy is a general proposal more dependent on immune status of the person and not of the specific type of tumor».