Despite dramatic advances in cancer therapies over the last two decades, pancreatic cancer remains the third-leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. Even with the best available treatments, about 90% of diagnosed patients die from the disease. Immune therapies that have shown success against other cancers seemed to have little effect.
“The thinking had been that you could not teach the immune system to recognize pancreatic cancer,” says Vinod Balachandran, a surgical oncologist and director of the Olayan Center for Cancer Vaccines at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. In a recent study, Balachandran showed that personalized vaccines could boost patients’ immune systems to help treat their pancreatic cancer. “Vaccines for cancer have just been so long sought after and are perhaps one of the most significant challenges in modern medicine,” he says.
Balachandran and his colleagues sequenced patient tumors and created custom vaccines against their cancer mutations using mRNA technology. In their previous study of 16 patients who got the vaccine, eight had strong immune responses; a new study found that six of those eight stayed cancer-free more than three years after treatment. The vaccine created a strong, long-lasting immune response. “In theory, you could perhaps teach the immune system to recognize a range of cancers with this approach,” says Balachandran.