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Trials for a pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine: “Nearly 90% of people whose immune systems responded to the vaccine were still alive up to six years after receiving the last treatment. The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is around 13%…”

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Caroline G.

While the results for responders are amazing, it looks like only 50% of folks' immune systems responded to the vaccine. I wonder why some people respond while others don't.

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Peter Benjamin

That's what I wanted to know, too. I wonder if the "personalization" is key to that and if it can be improved upon with further research...

Jason KottkeMOD

From a paper in Nature from 2023:

Our study was not powered to detect differences in biomarkers of vaccine response. Despite this limitation, we observed that tumours in responders were more clonal — possibly representing tumours in immune-edited evolution as seen in immunogenic PDACs in long-term survivors. Thus, we speculate that a more clonal primary tumour may reflect the ability of the immune system to recognize a tumour and therefore respond to a vaccine. Moreover, the observation that neoantigen quality correlates with immunogenic vaccine neoantigens provides further support for the concept that select neoantigens may possess higher immunogenic qualities that are possibly desirable for vaccines. However, in this trial, as responders and non-responders had comparable numbers of vaccine neoantigens drawn from a similar number of tumour mutations, we consider that an absence of a response in non-responders is unlikely due to a failure to include immunogenic neoantigens. Overall, these observations remain preliminary but support future investigation of whether tumour clonality and neoantigen quality could serve as biomarkers of vaccine response.

It's a very small phase 1 study — just 16 participants — so it's not surprising that they don't really know yet.

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Rick S

Pancreatic cancer is what took my mother, three years after the diagnosis. I recognize this is early early stages of testing, but I’m very glad to read it.

What they can’t do these days.

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