HQ team
August 23, 2024: .An mRNA-based lung cancer vaccine is being tested for the first time on patients in the UK.
Known as BNT116, and made by BioNTech, the vaccine is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of the disease. It utilises messenger RNA, similar to Covid-19 vaccines, and works by presenting the immune system with tumour markers to fight cancer cells expressing these markers.
Phase 1 of the clinical trial is being carried out across 34 research sites in seven countries: the UK, US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey. The first UK patient among 20 received the initial dose of the vaccine on August 20.
Overall, about 130 patients, from early-stage to late-stage disease or recurrent cancer, are in the program and will receive the injection alongside immunotherapy.
Professor Siow Ming Lee, a consultant medical oncologist at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said in a press statement: “It’s simple to deliver, and you can select specific antigens in the cancer cell, and then you target them.”
“Immunotherapy has made a big progress, especially in lung cancer,” Prof Lee added. “But it still doesn’t treat all lung cancer patients successfully.
“We’ve got personalised treatments using EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor). But now we just want to add on another additional immune approach attack, and we hope it’s a success.”
First vaccine
Janusz Racz, 67, is the first patient in the UK to receive the vaccine. He was given six injections, five minutes apart. Each jab contained different RNA strands. He will get the vaccine every week for six consecutive weeks, and then every three weeks for a total of 54 weeks.
Mr Racz says he’s proud to be involved in the trial: “I can be a part of the team that can provide proof of concept for this new methodology, and the faster it would be implemented across the world, more people will be saved.”
Vaccines and therapies in pipeline
A grant of $2.14 million (€1.98 million) from the Cancer Research UK and the CRIS Cancer Foundation has been made to develop a lung cancer vaccine. Called the “LungVax”. It would use a similar technology to that used for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19.
A French biotechnology company Ose Immunotherapeutics has also developed a vaccine that it says is effective in decreasing the risk of death for people with certain lung cancers by 41%.
Early this February, the USFDA cleared AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso with chemotherapy for treatment in adult patients with non-small cell lung cancer.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, with about 1.8m deaths every year. It is often diagnosed at advanced stages when treatment options are limited.
