Geneos cancer vaccine shrinks liver tumours in small trial
SAN DIEGO (MNP) – Nearly a third of patients with advanced liver cancer who received a personalized vaccine developed by Geneos Therapeutics along with an immunotherapy drug in a small, early trial saw their tumours shrink, US researchers reported on Sunday.
The result was roughly twice the response typically seen with the immunotherapy alone, the researchers said.
Findings from the preliminary study, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research in San Diego and published in Nature Medicine, suggests that vaccines based on mutations only present in a patient’s tumour may boost the immune system’s ability to recognize and attack hard-to-treat cancers.
The findings, which must be confirmed in a larger trial, moves the industry another step closer to effective cancer vaccines, after many past failures, and may expand the types of cancers that such therapies can treat.
Partners Moderna and Merck and Co and others have had promising results combining customized vaccines with immunotherapy to prevent skin cancer from returning in patients following surgery.
For the study, researchers used samples from patients’ tumours to build vaccines based on neoantigens – new mutations only present on an individual patient’s tumour. The goal was to train the immune system to attack and kill only these unique proteins, leaving healthy tissue unscathed.
