Pancreatic cancer: a personalised mRNA vaccine may boost effects of treatment

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest types of cancer. This is largely due to the fact that pancreatic cancer symptoms typically don’t arise until the late stages of the disease, making many patients ineligible for the current best treatment method, which is surgery to remove any tumours.

Our immune system is often very well equipped to fight cancer. But unfortunately, cancer cells contain certain protein receptors whose purpose is to help them hide from our immune cells – effectively preventing our immune system from destroying them. There are a few different types of immunotherapies, but a new one that is promising against cancer is the use of mRNA vaccines. These use genetic material in order to stimulate the immune system.

This mRNA is then given to patients as a personalised vaccine. It’s personalised because everyone has different neoantigens, so everyone receives slightly different vaccines with slightly different mutations encoded into the mRNA strand. The patients were all treated with this personalised vaccine, alongside another form of immunotherapy followed by aggressive chemotherapy.

The authors concluded that it may be because the immune system was successfully stimulated which helped stop the cancer returning. The mRNA vaccine was also well tolerated by patients with no obvious major side effects.

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