The world’s first human trials have been launched with a vaccine designed to kill the most common form of lung cancer and prevent it from coming back. The vaccine will be tested in several centers in seven countries.
Doctors have begun testing patients on the world’s first messenger RNA (mRNA) lung cancer vaccine, with experts hailing its “groundbreaking” potential to save thousands of lives.
Lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death worldwide
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the world, responsible for approximately 1.8 million deaths each year.
Survival rates for those with advanced forms of the disease, when the tumors have spread, are particularly low.
Experts are currently testing a vaccine that trains the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells and then prevent them from returning.
Known as BNT116 and developed by German manufacturer BioNTech, the vaccine is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease.
A Phase 1 clinical trial has been launched
A Phase 1 clinical trial, the first human trial of BNT116, was launched in 34 research centers in seven countries: the UK, the United States, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and the Turkey.
The UK has six centres, located in England and Wales, and the first British patient received the first dose of the vaccine on Tuesday.
In total, approximately 130 patients – from early stages, before surgery or radiation therapy, to advanced disease or recurrent cancer – will be registered to receive the vaccine together with immunotherapy.
The serum uses mRNA, similar to Covid-19 vaccines, and works by presenting tumor signals from NSCLC to the immune system to encourage the body to fight the cancer cells that are causing it. express these signs.
The goal is to strengthen a person’s immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells untouched, unlike chemotherapy.
“We are now entering this exciting new era of clinical trials of mRNA-based immunotherapy to investigate the treatment of lung cancer,” said Professor Siow Ming Lee, an oncologist at University Hospital London ( UCLH), which oversees the UK trial.
According to experts, the vaccine is simple to administer and can select specific antigens in the cancer cell that it can then target.
“This technology is the next big step in cancer treatment,” says Dr. Lee.
A new beginning in cancer treatment
“We hope that this additional treatment will stop the cancer from returning, because many times for lung cancer patients, even after surgery and radiation, it will come back,” said oncologist Dr. Lee .
“I have been in lung cancer research for 40 years. When I started in the 1990s, no one believed that chemotherapy worked. We now know that about 20-30% [dintre pacienți] stay alive with stage 4 with immunotherapy and now we want to improve survival rates. So we hope that this mRNA vaccine, part of the immunotherapy, could provide an additional boost. We hope to move to stage 2, stage 3 and then hopefully it will become the standard of care worldwide and save many lung cancer patients,” said the doctor.
Under this program, patients who meet the eligibility criteria will have access to clinical trials for these vaccines that experts say represent a new beginning in cancer treatment.
2024-08-26 02:11:00
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