Studies Assessing Vaccines in Different Cancer Types Appear “Promising”

Based on previous studies, cancer vaccines may work well in combination with immunotherapy options such as immune checkpoint blockade for patients with different types of cancer, said Catherine J. Wu, MD.

In a conversation with CancerNetwork^®, Wu, chief of the Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies and a Lavine Family Chair for Preventative Cancer Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, spoke about how the development of cancer vaccines may be a “cross-cutting” strategy that can advance treatment for various disease types. She stated that these vaccines may be most applicable for managing diseases that have a high mutation burden, in which there are several sources of neoantigens that can be targeted.

With respect to previous research, Wu highlighted a study conducted by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center assessing a personalized RNA neoantigen vaccine for patients with pancreatic cancer.¹ Findings from that study highlighted that the median recurrence-free survival was not reached in patients with vaccine-expanded T cells compared with 13.4 months in those without vaccine-expanded T cells (P = .003).

She also discussed a study that her institution conducted, in which she and her co-investigators reported intratumoral T-cell responses among patients who received a neoantigen vaccine for glioblastoma as part of a phase 1b trial.²

Transcript:

Cancer vaccines are a cross-cutting approach. Conceptually, it can be applicable across different types of cancers. Where we are right now with technology, it’s still going to be, at least for the personalized vaccines, most easy to envision in those cancers that have a high mutation burden, where we can find lots of different sources of neoantigens to target.

That being said, there have been very promising studies. One published this past year, 2023, from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in pancreatic cancer.1 Our group also previously reported out a study in glioblastoma back in 2019.2 This was also [done] together with colleagues in Germany, who also looked at glioblastoma. It is also possible for lower mutation burden tumors. There are many conceptual reasons for why cancer vaccines would partner well with other forms of immunotherapy such as immune checkpoint blockade. Increasingly, one can envision how it can be coupled together with cellular therapy.

References

1. Rojas LA, Sethna Z, Soares KC, et al. Personalized RNA neoantigen vaccines stimulate T cells in pancreatic cancer. Nature. 2023;618(7963):144-150. doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06063-y
2. Keskin DB, Anandappa AJ, Sun J, et al. Neoantigen vaccine generates intratumoral T cell responses in phase Ib glioblastoma trial. Nature. 2019;565(7738):234-239. doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0792-9