A lung cancer patient at UCLH in London is the first to receive a new cancer vaccine designed to trigger the immune system to recognize and fight cancer cells.
The investigational lung cancer mRNA immunotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), known as BNT116, uses messenger RNA (mRNA) to present common tumor markers from NSCLC to the patient’s immune system, with the goal of helping the immune system recognize and fight cancer cells which express these markers.
The vaccine, which is being tested at the British hospital UCLH (University College London Hospitals), is designed to specifically enhance immune responses against targets primarily expressed by cancer cells, reducing the risk of toxicity to healthy, non-cancerous cells, unlike chemotherapy, which often affects cancerous and healthy cells.
UCLH consultant medical oncologist Siow Ming Lee, who is leading the United Kingdom (UK) national study, said:
”Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, with an estimated 1.8 million deaths in 2020. We are now entering this very exciting new era of mRNA-based immunotherapy clinical trials for lung cancer treatment research, thanks to the foundations laid by the Life Sciences Office, within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Health and Social Care,” he said.
“We hope this will provide an opportunity to further improve outcomes for our NSCLC patients, whether in early or advanced stages,” said Prof. Lee, who is also a professor of medical oncology at UCL. The research of prof. Lee is supported by the National Institute for Health and Welfare Research (NIHR) Center for Biomedical Research at UCLH.
The primary objective of this study is to determine whether BNT116 is safe and well–tolerated. The trial will enroll patients at various stages of NSCLC, from early-stage NSCLC before surgery or radiotherapy (stages 2 and 3) to late-stage disease (stage 4) or cancer recurrence.
The trial aims to determine the safety profile and safe dose of BNT116 monotherapy, as well as BNT116 in combination with established NSCLC treatments to see if BNT116 has a synergistic antitumor effect when given with these established chemotherapy or immunotherapy treatments.
Around 130 participants will be included in the study at 34 research sites in seven countries, with six sites selected in the UK.
Janusz Racz, a 67-year-old lung cancer patient from London is the first recipient of a new investigational cancer vaccine at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) of the NHS, which published the report.
“I thought about it and Pacijla, I also thought that my participation in this research could help other people in the future and help make this therapy more widely available,” said Racz, who is a scientist in the field of artificial intelligence.
