Off-the-shelf vaccine shows success against deadly cancers
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An experimental vaccine targeting one of the most common genetic drivers of hard-to-treat pancreatic and colorectal cancers prevented their recurrence, raising hopes for an "off the shelf" treatment that can train the immune system to attack malignancies.
Why it matters: If shown effective in further trials, the vaccine could become a particularly important tool in staving off the return of pancreatic cancer, which sees roughly 80% of surgically removed tumors recur within five years.
What they're saying: "This was a trial all of us in the medical oncology world have been waiting for," said Tracy Proverbs-Singh, an oncologist at Hackensack Meridian's John Theurer Cancer Center.
- "We see these patients for five years, we see the recurrences, we have to re-treat them, and it's devastating. And after we finish chemo, there's not a lot we can do."
Go deeper: The peptide vaccine targets the KRAS mutation that occurs in roughly 90% of pancreatic cancers and half of colorectal cancers.
- Researchers administered the shot, called ELI-002 2P, to 25 patients who'd received conventional treatments but still had small amounts of cancer left in their bodies and were at high risk of relapse.
- Half of patients had no relapse by 16.3 months, and median overall survival was 28.9 months — both exceeding historical norms, per the study in Nature Medicine. The greatest benefit was seen in patients who had strong T cell responses.
- At the 20-month mark, 17 of the 25 patients had strong immune responses with 11 of those patients having no recurrence and six having delayed recurrence. The latter successfully underwent further treatment.
"All the 17 were still alive which is why we think there's optimistically, something real going on here, because that's much better than what we might have expected historically," said Zev Wainberg, co-director of the UCLA GI Oncology Program and one of the lead authors.
Yes, but: Researchers do not yet understand why eight of the 23 patients did not develop a strong immune response as a result of the vaccine.
Between the lines: Much of the enthusiasm around therapeutic cancer vaccines has centered on personalized mRNA technology.
- It is notable that researchers were able to use a non-personalized vaccine because it can be more easily developed at scale.
- "It's a big shot in the arm for the pancreatic cancer vaccine, which has been elusive in the context of us being able to get something that's effective in the early stages," said Madappa Kundranda, division chief for cancer medicine at Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Reality check: This is still a small Phase 1 trial and will require a more robust randomized controlled trial.
- Wainberg said the team has already completed such a trial and should have results back in 2026.
What to watch: Pancreatic cancer, which has a five-year survival rate of around 13% in the U.S., could be treated very differently within the next two years as multiple new drugs targeting the same mutations are also developed.
- "We're trying to gradually get away from chemotherapy in this disease, as they have somewhat successfully in lung cancer and breast cancer," Wainberg said. "I think we're headed there."
