The world’s first injection to stop the deadliest form of skin cancer is being tested on patients in the UK, Sky News reports.
Medics say the mRNA vaccine can also stop bladder, lung and kidney cancers from developing. It is created individually for each person and tells the body to identify cancer cells and stop the disease coming back.
Phase two trials have shown that it significantly reduces the risk of cancer returning in melanoma patients and the final trial has now begun.
University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) is leading this phase. Dr. Heather Shaw, co-ordinating investigator of the trial, said it was “one of the most exciting things we’ve seen in a really long time”. She added:
This is a really finely honed tool. To be able to sit there and say to your patients that you’re offering them something that’s effectively like the Fat Duck at Bray versus McDonald’s – it’s that level of cordon bleu that’s coming to them. These things are hugely technical and finely generated for the patient. The patients are really excited about them.
The injection can trigger the immune system to fight a patient’s specific type of cancer and is an individualised neoantigen therapy (INT). To create a customised therapy, a sample of the tumour is removed and its DNA sequenced, in which artificial intelligence is also involved. Dr. Shaw added:
This is very much an individualised therapy and it’s far cleverer in some senses than a vaccine. It is absolutely custom built for the patient – you couldn’t give this to the next patient in the line because you wouldn’t expect it to work. I think there is a real hope that these will be the gamechangers in immunotherapy.
The goal is to permanently cure the cancer and destroy all rogue cells that are not visible on scans.
The phase two study showed that people with high-risk melanomas who received the drug along with Keytruda immunotherapy were about half as likely to die or have their cancer come back after three years (49%) as those who received Keytruda alone. For the phase 3 global study, researchers hope to recruit around 1,100 people.
At least 60-70 patients are planned to be recruited at eight UK centres, and the dual therapy combination will also be tested in lung, bladder and kidney cancers.
Professor Lawrence Young, from the University of Warwick, called it “one of the most exciting developments in modern cancer therapy”. Prof. Young said:
Interest in cancer vaccines has been reignited in recent years by a deeper understanding of how the body controls immune responses and by the advent of mRNA vaccines which makes developing a vaccine based on the immune profile of a patient’s own tumour much more straightforward. The hope is that this approach could be extended to other cancers such as those of the lung and colon.
The issue of cancer treatment has become a hot topic in the UK after Princess Kate and King Charles III were diagnosed with cancer. The Princess and the King are currently undergoing treatment in a UK clinic.
