A pancreatic cancer vaccine has proven to be effective in half of patients treated in a small trial, according to a study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
Pancreatic cancer — often called the “silent killer,” since symptoms don’t show up in most patients until it has spread to other organs — occurs when cells in the pancreas mutate and form a tumour.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York sent tumour samples from 16 patients to scientists at BioNTech in Germany, the same company Pfizer teamed up with to produce COVID-19 vaccines.
After scientists analyzed proteins in a patient’s cancer cells, they used messenger RNA — a molecule that contains instructions to direct cells to make a protein — in a vaccine for each patient, attempting to tell the immune system to attack the cancer cells.
Along with the vaccine, subjects were also given chemotherapy and a drug meant to keep tumours from combatting immune responses.
8 of the 16 patients were cancer-free 18 months after treatment for pancreatic cancer. Getty Images
As a result, a shocking 8 out of the 16 patients in the trial were cancer-free 18 months after treatment.
What’s more, one patient’s cancer growth in their liver went away following the vaccine, imaging tests showed.
Costs, however, remain a barrier, since each vaccine must be customized, Dr Neeha Zaidi, a pancreatic cancer specialist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told the publication.
About 64,050 people will be diagnosed with the deadly disease this year. Pancreatic cancer accounts for about 3% of all cancers in the US, and around 7% of all cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.
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