British patients test first personalized mRNA injection against melanoma

British patients are testing the world’s first personalized mRNA injection against melanoma (a type of skin cancer), which also has the potential to stop lung, bladder and kidney cancer, PA media/DPA reported.

The “game-changing” injection, which offers hope for a cure, is prepared individually for each patient in just a few weeks. It works by making the body go after cancer cells and prevent the deadly disease from returning.

A phase 2 trial of the injection involving the pharmaceutical companies Moderna and MSD found that it dramatically reduced the risk of cancer returning in melanoma patients.

The latest phase 3 trial is now underway led by a trust involving a number of UK hospitals in partnership with University College London.

Dr. Heather Shaw, the trial’s national coordinating investigator, said the injection has the potential to treat people with melanoma and is being tested in other cancers.

Sharing details of the trial exclusively with the PA news agency, she said: “It’s one of the most exciting things we’ve seen in a long time.”

Dr Shaw also spoke of a “really precise and individually tuned instrument” and compared the opportunity given to patients to eating at a fine restaurant instead of a fast food joint.

In her words, it’s like being served the fine meal of cordon bleu.

The new injection is an individualized neoantigen therapy (INT) and is sometimes called a cancer vaccine.

It is designed to trigger the immune system so that it can fight against the patient’s specific type of cancer and tumor.

Known as mRNA-4157 (V940), the injection is designed to target tumor neoantigens that are expressed in a particular patient’s tumors.

These are tumor markers that can potentially be recognized by the immune system.

The injection carries the coding for up to 34 neoantigens and activates an anti-tumor immune response based on the unique mutations in the patient’s cancer.

To create the injection, a sample of the tumor is removed during the patient’s surgery, then the DNA is sequenced and artificial intelligence is used.

The result is a personalized anti-cancer injection that is specific to the patient’s tumor.

“It’s very much an individualized therapy and in some ways it’s much smarter than a vaccine. It’s absolutely personalized to the patient – you can’t give it to the next person in line because you don’t expect it to work for them,” says Dr Shaw .

The ultimate goal is to cure patients of cancer. “Absolutely, that’s the goal. With this therapy, you’re dealing with the theoretical risk that the cancer could come back,” she continues.

“What we’re trying to do, on a patient-by-patient basis, is to deliver a treatment to kill all those rogue cells that may have escaped and are lying around. Our desire is to get more people into the patient pool with relapse-free survival. This should translate to overall survival and disease-free survival in these patients over time, which equates to a cure,” Dr. Shaw added.

Phase 2 data released in December found that patients with serious, high-risk melanomas who received the injection along with the immunotherapy Keytruda were nearly half (49 percent) less likely to die or have their cancer return after three years. less than that in people who received immunotherapy alone.

The global phase 3 trial will include a wider range of patients and hopes to enroll about 1,100 people.

The UK aims to recruit at least 60-70 patients across eight centres, including London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Leeds.

The combination of therapies is also being tested in lung, bladder and kidney cancer.

“I think there’s real hope that this will be a turning point in immunotherapy. We’ve been looking for a long time for something that would be complementary to the immunotherapies that we already have and that we know can be life-changing for patients, but something that which has a really acceptable side effect profile,” says Dr. Shaw. “And these therapies look like they can offer that promise,” she adds.

Professor Laurence Young of the University of Warwick described the achievement as one of the most exciting in modern cancer therapy.

“The combination of a personalized cancer vaccine to stimulate a specific immune response to the patient’s tumor, along with the use of an antibody to release the brake on the body’s immune response, is already showing great promise in patients whose original skin cancer (melanoma) has been removed “.

Interest in cancer vaccines has revived in recent years thanks to a deeper understanding of how the body controls immune responses and the advent of mRNA vaccines, making developing a vaccine based on the immune profile of a patient’s own tumor much more likely. easy.

The hope is that this approach can be applied to other types of cancer, such as those of the lung and colon.