A pioneering new vaccine against brain cancer can treat the deadliest and most aggressive form of the disease, early research suggests.
The shot trains patients’ immune systems to fight malignant glioblastoma, the type of tumor that killed the late Sen. John McCain and Beau Biden.
Like other experimental cancer vaccines being studied, it contains fragments of patients’ own tumors, meaning no two injections are the same.
These cancerous particles are designed to look like a dangerous virus when reinjected into the bloodstream, prompting the body to attack the remaining tumor in the brain.
Beau Biden died at age 46 in 2015 from glioblastoma
The first-in-human trial of the injection, tested in just four patients, found that it triggers a strong immune response two days after the injection.
It has been developed by researchers at the University of Florida and uses the same mRNA technology pioneered during Covid.
The breakthrough means scientists will now be able to test the vaccine in a larger group of brain cancer patients.
About 24 people will be recruited for the next part of the trial.
The study’s lead author, Elias Sayour, a pediatric oncologist at UF Health, said: “In less than 48 hours, we could see these tumors go from what we call ‘cold’ (immune cold, very few immune cells, very muted immune response ) to a “hot” and very active immune response.
“That was very surprising given how quickly it happened, and what that told us is that we were able to activate the initial part of the immune system very quickly against these cancers, and that is critical to unlocking the downstream effects of the immune response.”
Glioblastoma has an average survival of about 15 months and the current standard of care involves surgery, radiation and some combination of chemotherapy.
Researchers say the discovery represents a potential new way to activate the immune system to combat notoriously treatment-resistant cancers using an iteration of mRNA technology similar to Covid-19 vaccines.
However, there are two key differences: the use of the patient’s own tumor cells to create a personalized vaccine and a complex, newly designed delivery mechanism within the vaccine.
In the group of four patients, genetic material called RNA was extracted from each patient’s own tumor and then messenger RNA, or mRNA, the blueprint for what’s inside every cell, including tumor cells, was amplified.
It was then wrapped in the newly designed vaccine to make tumor cells look like a dangerous virus when reinjected into the bloodstream and trigger an immune system response.
The trial results reflect those of 10 dog patients with naturally occurring brain tumors and those of clinical trials in mice.
Although it is too early to evaluate the clinical effects of the vaccine, patients in the new trial lived disease-free longer than expected or survived longer than expected.
Dr. Sayour said, “I’m hopeful that this could be a new paradigm for how we treat patients, a new technology platform for how we can modulate the immune system.”
‘I’m hopeful that this can now synergize with other immunotherapies and perhaps unlock those immunotherapies.
“In this paper we showed that you can really have synergy with other types of immunotherapies, so maybe now we can have a combined immunotherapy approach.
The research is published in the journal Cell and comes after the trial of the first personalized anti-cancer mRNA injection for melanoma was announced.
The vaccine also has the potential to stop lung, bladder and kidney cancer.
It is custom-made for each person in just a few weeks and works by telling the body to look for cancer cells and prevent the deadly disease from returning.
A stage 2 trial of the vaccine, involving pharmaceutical companies Moderna and MSD, found that it dramatically reduced the risk of cancer coming back in melanoma patients.
A final phase 3 trial has now been launched.