Anglo-Chinese research suggests pancreatic cancer vaccine is possible - The Pharma Letter

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London and Zhengzhou University, China, have developed a personalized vaccine system that could ultimately delay the onset of pancreatic cancer, they believe.

Newly-published research provides strong proof-of-concept for the creation of a vaccine for cancer prevention in individuals at high risk of developing this disease and to slow down tumor growth in patients who are affected by it.

Survival time doubled

The study reports the team's work with a pre-clinical model using mice. The research was published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Researchers created a vaccine system that doubled the survival time of mice with pancreatic cancer. Importantly, the vaccine system can be personalized for the individual receiving it and could potentially be tailored to work against other types of cancer.

'Could be a platform for developing personalized and powerful cancer vaccines'

Yaohe Wang from Queen Mary University of London and the Sino-British Research Centre at Zhengzhou University in China, who led the study, said: “Development of a preventive vaccine against non-viral cancers is hugely limited by the lack of appropriate tumor antigens and an effective approach to induce robust anti-tumor immunity against those antigens.

“Through this international collaboration, we have made progress towards the development of a prophylactic cancer vaccine against pancreatic cancer.

“This is preliminary data from tests on mice but it could be a platform for developing personalized and powerful cancer vaccines to reduce cancer incidence in at-risk individuals.”

Louisa Chard Dunmall, senior postdoctoral research fellow at Queen Mary, said: “Although this research is at the early developmental stages, it provides strong evidence that the creation of a vaccine against pancreatic cancer is possible.”

https://ift.tt/37JMsks