Lung cancer kills 1.8 million patients every year. The world's first mRNA vaccine has begun trials in seven countries, and could save thousands of lives.
Lung cancer is the world's No. 1 cancer. Survival rates for people with late forms of the disease, when the tumor has metastasized, are particularly low. Experts now testing a new vaccinewhich makes the body track down and kill cancer cellsstopping their growth.
The vaccine, known as BNT116 and created by BioNTech, is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease, the Guardian reports.
The Phase 1 clinical trial, the first study of BNT116 in humans, has begun at 34 study sites in seven countries: Great Britain, USA, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey. There are six centres in the UK, located in England and Wales. A total of around 130 patients – from early stage before surgery or radiotherapy to advanced disease or relapsed cancer – will be enrolled in the trial to receive the vaccine alongside immunotherapy.
How does the vaccine work?
The vaccine uses messenger RNA (mRNA), like the Covid-19 vaccines, and works by presenting the immune system with NSCLC cancer markers to prime the body to fight cancer cells expressing those markers. The goal is to boost a person's immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells untouched, unlike chemotherapy.We are now entering this very exciting new era of clinical trials of mRNA-based immunotherapy to study the treatment of lung cancer.” said Professor Siou Ming Lee, an oncologist at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH).
First patient in the UK
The first person to receive the vaccine in the UK was Janusz Racz, 67, an artificial intelligence scientist who was diagnosed with cancer in May and began chemotherapy and radiotherapy.I am a scientist myself and I understand that the progress of science – especially in medicine – is that people agree to participate in such studies. This is a new technique that is not available to other patients, and it can help me get rid of cancer” he said.
On Tuesday Rac received six consecutive injections at five-minute intervals for 30 minutes at the National Institute for Health Research's UCLH Clinical Research Centre. Each injection contained a different strand of RNA. He will receive the vaccine every week for six weeks straight, and then every three weeks for 54 weeks.
Hopes for stage 2 and 3
«We hope that adding this additional treatment will stop the cancer from coming back because often in patients with lung cancer, even after surgery and radiation, it comes back.“, notes Professor Siou Ming Lee. According to Lee, “about 20-30% of patients survive to stage 4 with immunotherapy, and now we want to improve survival rates. So we hope that this mRNA vaccine, in addition to immunotherapy, can provide an additional boost“He expressed hope that the medical community will move on to the second and third phases.”We hope that this will become the standard of care worldwide and save many lung cancer patients.” he said.
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