Pancreatic Cancer mRNA Vaccine Shows Lasting Results In Early Trial (nbcnews.com) 17
NBC News reports on a 16-person clinical trial of "personalized messenger RNA vaccines" which use the immune system to fight cancer cells. "The goal is not to eliminate existing tumors, but instead to stamp out lingering, undetected cancer cells, and later any new cells that form before they can cause a recurrence."
Patients still have surgery to remove tumors. After that, the mRNA vaccines are personalized for each individual using genetic material taken from their unique tumor cells. In the clinical trial, after getting the vaccine, the patients also received chemotherapy, which is standard post-op treatment for operable pancreatic cancer... [The article notes that less than 13% of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer live for more than five years, making it "one of the deadliest cancers."]
[E]xperts have long believed that people with pancreatic cancer could not generate an immune response against tumors. But after nine doses of the personalized vaccine, [clinical trial participant Donna] Gustafson is one of eight people in the 16-person Phase 1 trial who did just that, producing an army of immune cells called T cells that seek out and destroy tumor cells... [Dr. Vinod Balachandran, a vaccine center director who is leading the trial, said] it was unclear whether the immune response would last and lead to the patients living longer... New data collected during the trial's six-year follow-up period shows that it may. Those findings will be presented Monday at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting in San Diego. Six years after treatment, Gustafson and six others who responded to the treatment are still alive...
More research is still needed. Genentech and BioNTech, the two drugmakers behind the vaccine, have already launched a larger Phase 2 clinical trial... Another team is working on an off-the-shelf vaccine that targets a protein called KRAS that is present in as many as 90% of pancreatic cancers. In a small, early trial, about 85% of the participants mounted an immune response to the protein.
[E]xperts have long believed that people with pancreatic cancer could not generate an immune response against tumors. But after nine doses of the personalized vaccine, [clinical trial participant Donna] Gustafson is one of eight people in the 16-person Phase 1 trial who did just that, producing an army of immune cells called T cells that seek out and destroy tumor cells... [Dr. Vinod Balachandran, a vaccine center director who is leading the trial, said] it was unclear whether the immune response would last and lead to the patients living longer... New data collected during the trial's six-year follow-up period shows that it may. Those findings will be presented Monday at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting in San Diego. Six years after treatment, Gustafson and six others who responded to the treatment are still alive...
More research is still needed. Genentech and BioNTech, the two drugmakers behind the vaccine, have already launched a larger Phase 2 clinical trial... Another team is working on an off-the-shelf vaccine that targets a protein called KRAS that is present in as many as 90% of pancreatic cancers. In a small, early trial, about 85% of the participants mounted an immune response to the protein.
This is great news... (Score:1, Insightful)
...if you don't live in AmeriKKKa. For those of you who live in that shithole country, too bad. The orange retard you installed for sure won't let you have it. Something about owning the Libs, et al...
Re: (Score:2)
No worries, the tiktok spammers will find a zillion imaginary issues with this and label it "killer", kind of like they still claim the same about the Covid mrna vaccines, although it has been unambiguously demonstrated on a very large scale that they have been both very safe and effective. [jamanetwork.com]
Re: This is great news... (Score:2)
Re: This is great news... (Score:2)
Incidentally, the very rich Americans also get better treatment than most Americans.
So... a mRNA cancer treatment, under RFK, Jr? (Score:5, Interesting)
Given how much HHS Secretary RFK, Jr. is against mRNA vaccines and is cancelling support and funding for them -- Google: RFK mrna cancels [google.com] -- I wonder how he'll feel about the FDA considering and approving this?
At the rate Trump is going (Score:1, Troll)
The goal of 9/11 was to force America to overreact and attack uninvolved parties so that America would be substantially
Re: (Score:2)
That's not how you stop elections (Score:2, Informative)
The Republican party uses a handful of county level voter suppression tactics. They have a network of volunteers hoping to get ahead in the party that spend hours illegally challenging signatures and voter registrations. Meanwhile they get some of their people in charge of the county positio
Re: (Score:2)
If the US could have elections during the civil, WWI, and WWII, I can't imagine even the R's agreeing to not having elections for an attack. And I don't expect one either.
More to the point, the Constitution doesn't say anything about extending current elected terms in the absence of elections, so Trump simply won't be President on Jan 21, 2028, The 20th Amendment says “the terms of the president and vice president shall end at noon” on January 20. Similarly on January 3 for all House members and some Senate members up for election. According to the 2020 article below, this situation may result in the remaining Senators choosing a President from amongst themse
KRAS off the shelf (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, through the lens of what medicine in general costs in the US, sure; once all the "rigor" of the industry is accounted for, that shit's gonna be very, very exclusive. But you might be surprised by how cheap is DNA synthesis (the in my mind one super high tech bottleneck of this, other than just sequencing the cancer samples) is getting for "research" - it might not be too long for this to become magically supper affordable to do on a dog yet somehow inexplicably expensive for any human.
Re:KRAS off the shelf (Score:5, Insightful)
That one sounds more promising. A "custom" mRNA vaccine sounds very expensive. Very. Like billionaire class drug.
Penicillin was very expensive when it first was produced in scale, then the cost fell steeply. Once the process is refined and standardized, it might not be any more costly than a blood sample and a Crisper targeted process. The individualized vaccine might be cheaper than the entire chemo process over time.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure. A few hundred dollars to have it synthesized. Another hundred bucks for sequencing the tumor genome.
Most of the cost of these things is typically the clinical trials, and covering the costs of all the trials for other drugs that fail. To make stuff like this fully personalized they'll have to validate the procedure for going from genome to vaccine rather than each specific formulation. There's precedent for that though, e.g. the flu vaccine. Also, the bar is much lower for something you're giving to p
great, however (Score:2)
Our health secretary has found promising results in licking toilet seats.
Re: great, however (Score:3)