Researchers have developed a new mRNA cancer vaccine to retrain the body’s immune system to attack deadly brain tumors.
- The brain cancer glioblastoma affects about 3
in every 100,000 people around the world each year.
- Glioblastoma is difficult to treat, and people
with this condition have an average survival length of approximately 1
year.
- Researchers from the University of Florida have
developed a new mRNA cancer vaccine to retrain the body’s immune system to
attack and potentially treat glioblastoma.
Glioblastoma is the most common type of brain cancer,
affecting about 3 in every 100,000 people globally
each year.
Recent research shows that glioblastoma incidence
is
Glioblastoma is a challenging cancer to treat and
has an average five-year survival rate of 6.9%.
Now, researchers from the University of Florida have
developed a new mRNA cancer vaccine to retrain the body’s
immune system to attack and potentially treat glioblastoma. The results of this
study were recently published in the journal Cell.
“Glioblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor,
and despite the boon in medical innovations, outcomes have not precipitously
changed in decades,” Elias Sayour, MD, PhD, the
Stop Children’s Cancer/Bonnie R. Freeman Professor for Pediatric Oncology
Research in the Departments of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at the University of
Florida and lead author of this study told Medical News Today.
“Our brain tumor program has developed promising
effects with other forms of immunotherapy against brain cancer and
wanted to test a novel mRNA vaccine design to enhance responses for these
difficult-to-treat diseases,” Sayour added.
Benefits of
personalized mRNA cancer vaccines
Ever since the mRNA
vaccines were developed to fight the coronavirus, scientists have been studying
their use for the treatment of other conditions, including cancer.
In this study, researchers used study participants’
own tumor cells to create a personalized vaccine for their particular cancer.
“mRNA is
the information from our genetic code that is turned into protein: the hardware
that makes each of us — and each cancer — unique,” Sayour explained.
“By targeting the unique mRNA repertoire of a
patient’s cancer, we can make exquisitely personalized vaccines unique to
individual tumors in a manner that is feasible and commercializable to all.”
mRNA vaccine
triggers effective immune response
The study evaluated the
impact of the new mRNA vaccines by testing 10 pet dogs who had natural brain
tumors and were enrolled in the study by their owners because they had no other
treatment options.
Dogs treated with the
mRNA cancer vaccine lived an average of 139 days, compared to the average 30-
to 60-day survival rate for dogs with the condition.
After animal tests, the
scientists expanded their research to a small FDA-approved clinical trial of
four human study participants with glioblastoma.
After
receiving the mRNA vaccine, researchers reported that in less than 48 hours,
they were able to observe brain tumors moving from a “cold” silenced immune
response to a “hot” active immune response.
“This is significant because it usually takes time —
weeks to months with boosters — for vaccines to begin working,” Sayour said.
“We expect this work to create a new paradigm that rapidly activates the immune
system against cancer.”
“To win the war on cancer,
the immune system needs a better head start. We hope this approach gives the
immune system the head start it needs to win the race against rapidly evolving
tumors. By getting rapid responses from a single vaccine, the immune system can
be rapidly reprogrammed to fight cancer.”— Elias Sayour, MD, PhD, lead study
author
Larger
clinical trials could validate findings
Scientists said that
while it is still too early to assess the clinical effects of the mRNA cancer
vaccine, they did report that human study participants receiving the vaccine
either lived disease-free longer than expected or survived longer than
expected.
The researchers also stated the small clinical trial
of four participants helped demonstrate early safety and feasibility before
expanding to a larger clinical trial.
“We must validate these findings in (a) larger cohort
of patients, identify a maximally tolerated dose, and begin phase II trials,”
Sayour said.
“We are also moving aggressively to launch this
platform against pediatric brain tumors.”
More
research on cancer vaccines for glioblastoma needed
Wael Harb, MD,
a board certified hematologist and medical oncologist at MemorialCare Cancer
Institute at Orange Coast and Saddleback Medical Centers in Orange County, CA,
told MNT that
as glioblastoma is a very difficult cancer to treat, doctors are in need of new
treatments. Harb was not involved in the study.
“The overall strategy is very interesting using the
systemic immune response while reprogramming the tumor microenvironment is very
promising — and in the larger context of immunotherapy research, I think this
is a really exciting approach,” Harb said.
“The next step would be [a]
well-designed clinical trial looking at the safety and efficacy in a more
diverse patient population to really understand how these RNA-LPAs (RNA
lipid-particle aggregates) work in reprogramming the tumor microenvironment. “I
would love to see, in addition to safety efficacy data, biomarkers to show that
this is happening.”— Wael Harb, MD, hematologist and medical oncologist
“To me, this is a way of educating the immune cells
[on] how to fight cancer,” Harb continued.
“I think the crucial step would be to proceed with
that to see the result of the early phase clinical trial — is that translating
into what is the safety and efficacy, (and) are the biomarkers (that) we’re
seeing in humans correlating to what we saw in animal studies,” Harb noted.
Jose Carrillo, MD, a board
certified neurologist and neuro-oncologist at Pacific Neuroscience Institute
and associate professor of neurology at the Saint John’s Cancer Institute at
Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, not involved in the
study, told MNT his initial reaction to the findings was one of “cautious
optimism.”
“This study describes a
novel technique for inducing an immune response in glioblastoma, which has been
notoriously difficult to obtain significant advances in survival with immune
therapies and clinical trials. I remain positive, however, based upon studies
like these, that steady progress is being made in unraveling new discoveries
that will get (us) one step closer to better treatments for our patients.— Jose
Carrillo, MD, neuro-oncologist.
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