Vaccine ‘personalises’ cancer care

Source: http://phnews.org.au/

16/06/23

A new personalised cancer treatment for melanoma patients is showing encouraging results in a global trial led by Perth’s Hollywood Private Hospital.

Western Australia’s largest private hospital is the highest recruiting site among several international institutions taking part in tests of a first-of-its-kind vaccine.

Professor Adnan Khattak, the trial’s lead author, said the mRNA-4157 vaccine used a patient’s tumour DNA – which is released into the bloodstream as cells die – to help target their individual cancerous growth.

“Current treatments are more generic and work for some cases and not for others,” Prof Khattak said.

“This trial is considering a more personalised approach towards targeting an individual patient’s tumour. Essentially treating the right patient with the right drug at the right time.”

While there is no cure for the skin cancer – the main treatment is usually early surgical removal – Prof Khattak said the trial had shown the vaccine “significantly delayed” disease recurrence in patients with resected high-risk melanoma when added to standard-of-care therapy.

Chemotherapy, radiation therapy and immunotherapy are used to treat more advanced cases of melanoma, which was the 10th-deadliest form of cancer in Australia in 2020 and one of the most commonly diagnosed.

“We’ve also found this approach not only reduces the chances of melanoma relapsing locally but more importantly stops it from spreading to the distant organs,” said Prof Khattak, a medical oncologist and cancer clinical trials lead at Hollywood Private Hospital.

“Taking this more personalised approach to cancer treatment, we hope to be better able to treat our patients how they need to be treated, whether that’s one drug or two drugs, and hopefully also save some from side-effects of therapy if they are not responding well to a particular drug,” he added.

Prof Khattak presented the results of the phase two trial at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s 2023 annual meeting in Chicago, which attracts tens of thousands of leading international cancer specialists.

“This is potentially a very exciting approach that may be applicable across multiple tumour types, so was worthy of sharing with thousands of leading oncologists from around the world,” he said.

“I do a lot of clinical trials, but this unique personalised cancer vaccine therapy trial is the first of its kind to demonstrate benefit and has led to plans for a much bigger study in melanoma and also in other cancers moving forward.” 

Hollywood Private Hospital, part of Ramsay Health Care Australia, has 60 active clinical trials as part of its research in areas including breast cancer, blood disorders, cardiology, urology, mental health, oncology, palliative care, orthopaedics and nuclear medicine.