Thousands of NHS cancer patients in England are expected to get access to trials of a new type of treatment using vaccines to fight their disease.
Thirty hospitals so far have signed up to the Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad.
It is designed to match patients with forthcoming trials using mRNA technology, as found in current Covid jabs.
The vaccines are designed to prime the immune system to recognise and destroy any remaining cancer cells and reduce the risk of the disease recurring.
Elliot Pfebve, 55, is the first patient to be treated with a personalised vaccine against bowel cancer in England.
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After Elliot’s initial treatment, tests showed that he still had fragments of cancerous DNA in his bloodstream, which puts patients at increased risk of their cancer coming back.
So he signed up to a trial of an investigational vaccine made by German pharma company BioNTech, which uses the same mRNA technology as in the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine.
What is a personalised cancer vaccine?
Vaccines are usually designed to prevent disease.
But cancer vaccines are created as a treatment once someone has been diagnosed.
Just as with conventional vaccines, they prime the immune system to look for an enemy, in this case the patient’s cancer.
A sample of Elliot’s tumour was sent to BioNTech’s labs in Germany where up to 20 mutations specific to his cancer were identified.
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More than 200 patients in the UK, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Sweden will be recruited to the trial and will receive up to 15 doses of the personalised vaccine.
The study is not due to be completed until 2027.
One hope is that the vaccines will produce fewer side effects than conventional chemotherapy.
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