A personal vaccine can reduce the risk of returning pancreas after the operation, finds small studies

According to a preliminary study published on Wednesday, a personalized mRNA vaccine can reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer that returns after the operation.

Pancreas cancer is one of the most aggressive types of cancer with a typical survival rate of just about one year after the diagnosis.

While the results are encouraging, the vaccine is still in early tests and will probably take years for it to be widespread – provided that ongoing studies continue to show the study.

In this small preliminary study with 16 patients, half had a strong immune response to the vaccine. Most of these responsers stayed with cancer for more than three years, much longer than those who did not react.

The vaccine works by training special immune system cells that are known as T cells to recognize and attack cancer.

The researchers could not pursue tumor shrinkage because all patients had an operation before vaccination to remove visible cancer. However, they found that the vaccine produced long-lasting T cells that have been able to continue fighting cancer for years.

“This is a possibility that you can use to produce many T cells, and you can make these T cells so that they exist in patients for a long time and can keep their function,” said Balacandran.

Balacandran said: “Being able to get an immune response was very difficult”, especially if an illness such as pancreatic cancer generally does not react to vaccines, which emphasizes the importance of these results.

A larger study is now underway to confirm the results. If successful, this approach could lead to new opportunities to treat or even prevent pancreas and other advanced cancer.

Overall, Balacandran said that this study “can provide some important information on how to further develop vaccines for other cancer”.

“Hopefully this information that we learn from these clinical studies will have a more advanced disease,” said Balacandran.

-Suhas cook, MD, contributed to this report