A new personalized cancer vaccine posed no safety concerns and showed potential benefits for patients with various cancers, including lung and bladder cancers who have a high chance of recurrence. This is according to the results of a Phase 1 clinical trial presented by researchers during the Virtual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting 2021, which is currently underway.
“While immunotherapy has revolutionized the treatment of cancer, the vast majority of patients do not experience a significant clinical response to such treatments,” said study author Thomas Marron, MD, PhD, assistant director for early-stage and immunotherapy trials at the Tisch Cancer Institute and assistant professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine on Mount Sinai, in a statement. “Cancer vaccines, which usually combine tumor-specific targets that can recognize and attack the immune system to prevent recurrence of cancer. The vaccine also contains a tool that makes the immune system primarily to maximize its effectiveness.”
At trial, 13 patients received the personalized vaccine; 10 patients had solid tumors, while three had multiple myeloma.
Marron’s team developed the vaccine by sequencing a patient’s specific tumor genetics and germline DNA. They then identified specific targets on the tumor, which helped them predict whether the patient’s immune system would recognize the vaccine’s targets. The researchers then use a computational system called OpenVax from Mount Sinai to help limit which of the targets are viable options to include in a personalized vaccine.
“Most experimental personalized cancer vaccines are administered in the metastatic environment, but previous research suggests that immunotherapies are more effective in patients with less spread of cancer,” said author Nina Bhardwaj, also of the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai. said. “We have therefore developed a neoantigen vaccine that is administered after adjunctive therapy, such as surgery in solid tumors and bone marrow transplantation in multiple myeloma, when patients have a minimal – typically microscopic – residual disease.”
Although the primary focus of the Phase 1 test is to test the safety of the vaccine, which the researchers say is “well tolerated,” the trial also showed some encouraging results regarding long-term positive outcomes in some patients.
However, it is noteworthy that it is too early to draw firm conclusions, as the patient size of the Phase 1 study was significantly small and the vaccine was therefore not tested for safety and efficacy in a diverse population with different tumor theologies and post- . operational courses not yet.
“Our results show that the OpenVax pipeline is a viable approach to generating a safe, personalized cancer vaccine that could potentially be used to treat a variety of tumors,” Bhardwaj said.