67-year-old Januz Raz became the first patient to receive the new lung cancer vaccine. He himself took part in the experiment with optimism – if all goes well it could be the start of a new and revolutionary treatment.
But how will a vaccine help in the fight against one of the most common types of cancer in men and women? Unlike the vaccines we get to avoid getting sick, cancer vaccines are made for those who are already sick.
The vaccine, codenamed BNT116, is being developed by BioNTech using mRNA technology, the same one on which the COVID-19 vaccine was based.
Raz, 67, administered six injections within half an hour, each containing a different genetic material. He will get the shot every week for another six weeks and then every three weeks for another 54 weeks (that is, one year).
The aim of the scientists is to “train” five billion cells of the immune system to attack cancer cells. This can be much more effective than chemotherapy because the side effects on healthy body cells will be significantly less.
Cancer, Sky News reports, has a way of hiding from the immune system. This vaccine “teaches” the immune system that the tumor is a threat in order to get it to fight the cancer. It contains information about “markers” on the surface of cancer cells that immune cells “learn” to recognize.
This means that BioNTech’s vaccine is, in a sense, “generic”, for all patients with a certain type of cancer. Other vaccines for other types of cancer are made specifically for each patient. For example, a personalized mRNA vaccine for melanoma is in advanced testing, while another is being developed for colon cancer.
Non-small cell lung cancer, which Raz also has, is the most common form of lung cancer. In most, if not all, cases it is due to smoking. Every year deaths worldwide reach 1.8 million.
For many patients, the diagnosis comes late, because this cancer has no symptoms in the early stages. This means it is not effective enough – just one in four survives five years after first diagnosis.
It is the first time the vaccine has been tested on humans. The trial will confirm whether there are any side effects before doctors move on to studies on a larger sample.
Gradually the research will be expanded to six hospitals and 130 patients with non-small cell cancer. It will include both patients at a relatively early stage, who have not had surgery or chemotherapy, and patients who have experienced metastases or cancer recurrence.
Raz, an AI scientist himself, is extremely optimistic. He even wants to return to the marathon he once ran – in 2016 he also ran in Athens. His goal is to run in London within three years.
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