👩‍⚕️ New cancer vaccine shows promising results against pancreatic cancer

• Patients who received a personalized cancer vaccine and developed an immune response lived longer without relapse.
• The T-cells created by the vaccine remained in the body for about 3 years and continued to fight cancer cells.
• The vaccine appears to delay recurrence of pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of cancer.

80% did not relapse

In a new study, researchers examined patients with surgically removed pancreatic cancer who received a personalized vaccine based on the patient's own tumor.

After 3.2 years of follow-up, researchers saw clear differences:

• Patients whose immune systems responded to the vaccine (8 patients) had not yet reached the median time to relapse.
• Patients whose immune systems did not respond to the vaccine (8 patients) relapsed after an average of 13.4 months.

Activates the body's own defenses

Pancreatic cancer is very deadly with 88 percent of patients not surviving. What makes these results so promising is that:

1. The vaccine created immune cells (T-cells) that specifically attack cancer cells.
2. These immune cells remained in the body for several years.
3. The immune cells continued to function even after a long time.

When two patients relapsed, researchers discovered that their tumors had fewer of the target molecules that the vaccine was directed against. This suggests that the immune system had effectively attacked cancer cells with these target molecules.

What happens next

A larger global study is underway to confirm these results. If confirmed, this vaccination method could become a new treatment option for pancreatic cancer and possibly other forms of cancer in the future.

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