Are we going to have a pancreatic cancer vaccine? Real hope thanks to messenger RNA

This could be a first vaccine against the evil of the century. Against the most lethal of them, pancreatic cancer, the first trials of a messenger RNA vaccine seem very promising. And this is due to the very technique of this form of vaccine, which allows scientists to manufacture a personalized vaccine, tailor-made, according to the cancer cells of the patient.

Effective immune response

In concrete terms, patients are operated on to extract part of the tumour. Thanks to these samples, in the laboratory, researchers analyze the genetic composition of the proteins present on the surface of cancer cells. From the results, a serum specific to the patient’s cancer is made. Once injected, the vaccine allows the immune system to attack tumors on its own. Results: out of sixteen patients treated, eight developed cells capable of destroying the cancer.

“The results are quite impressive and quite encouraging and about thirty patients were operated on. What is quite remarkable in the study is this correlation between this development, an effective immune response and the end of relapse”, adds Jean -Yves Blay, oncologist researcher, president of the Unicancer federation. In parallel with the RNA vaccine, they received conventional treatments. A year and a half later, there has been no relapse. Faced with these results, the researchers plan to launch a large-scale trial this summer, because pancreatic cancer is violent: in 2018, the estimated number of deaths was 11,456 for 14,184 estimated cases.