NEW YORK – A personalized cancer vaccine may sound more like fiction to some than reality. However, researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital report that they developed it using a computer platform. Even better, these personalized vaccines – treating forms of the disease, including lung and bladder cancer – seem safe to use and beneficial for patients at high risk of recurrence. These findings are based on the initial results of a phase-1 clinical trial regarding the vaccines.
“Although immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment, 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 media statement. ‘Cancer vaccines, which usually combine tumor-specific targets that can teach the immune system to recognize and attack to prevent recurrence of cancer. The vaccine also contains a tool that replenishes the immune system to maximize its effectiveness. ‘
Use tumor DNA to make better cancer medicine
Researchers compiled the tumor and germline DNA and tumor RNA of each patient to create a personalized vaccine. Furthermore, the team noted the tumor-specific target of each patient. This helps scientists get a better idea of whether the patient’s immune system will recognize the vaccine’s targets.
Then calculate the pipeline of Mount Sinai, OpenVax, helped researchers identify and prioritize immunogenic targets to synthesize and add each vaccine.
In the six months following any standard cancer treatments, each participating cancer patient received ten doses of personalized vaccine. Doctors administered the vaccines via the immunostimulant (tool, poly-ICLC). Co-study author Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, describes it as ” a synthetic, stabilized, double-stranded RNA capable of activating several innate immune receptors, making it the optimal tool to elicit immune responses against tumor neoantigens. ‘
“Most experimental, personalized cancer vaccines are administered in the metastatic environment, but previous research suggests that immunotherapy tends to be more effective in patients who spread less cancer,” explains Dr. Bhardwaj. “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, typical microscopic residual disease. 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. ‘
Scientists reveal a promising first step
Before each patient is tested, he has a ‘statistically high’ chance of cancer recurrence. Among the 13 patients who received a personalized vaccine, ten had a fixed tumor diagnosis and three had multiple myeloma to begin with.
After an average of 880 days, four of the patients showed no signs of cancer. Another four received more and more treatments and four died. The final volunteer decided not to participate in the study anymore. Overall, study authors reported that the group tolerated the treatments well. Although about one-third of the patients showed slight reactions at the injection site.
The purpose of a phase 1 trial is only to determine the safety of a new treatment. In this sense, phase 1 was therefore largely a success. In addition, one patient showed a palpable immune response to the vaccine. Two others showed a ‘robust’ response to subsequent immunotherapy treatments.
The Mount Sinai team presented their findings at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting 2021.