Doctors have begun testing the world’s first mRNA lung cancer vaccine in patients, as experts hailed its “groundbreaking” potential to save thousands of lives.
Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for around 1.8 million deaths each year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumors have spread, are particularly poor.
Now experts are testing a new sting that instructs the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells — and then prevent them from ever coming back. Known as BNT116 and made by BioNTech, the vaccine is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease.
The phase 1 clinical trial, the first human study of BNT116, was launched across 34 research sites in seven countries: the UK, the US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey.
The UK has six sites, located in England and Wales, with the first UK patient receiving the vaccine with their initial dose on Tuesday.
Overall, around 130 patients – from early stage before surgery or radiotherapy, to late stage disease or recurrent cancer – will be enrolled to receive the jab along with immunotherapy. Around 20 will be from the UK.
The jab uses messenger RNA (mRNA), similar to Covid-19 vaccines, and works by presenting the immune system with tumor markers of NSCLC to help the body fight cancer cells that express these markers.
The goal is to boost a person’s immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells unaffected, unlike chemotherapy.
“We are now entering this very exciting new era of mRNA-based immunotherapy clinical trials to investigate the treatment of lung cancer,” says Prof Siow Ming Lee, a consultant medical oncologist at University College London hospitals. NHS foundation trust (UCLH), which is leading the trial in the United Kingdom.
“It’s easy to deliver, and you can select specific antigens in the cancer cell, and then you target them. This technology is the next big phase of cancer treatment.”
Janusz Racz, 67, from London, was the first person to receive the vaccine in the UK. He was diagnosed in May and soon after began chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
The scientist, who specializes in AI, said his profession inspired him to take part in the trial. “I am also a scientist and I understand that the progress of science – especially in medicine – lies in people agreeing to be involved in such investigations,” he said.
He added: “It will be very beneficial for me because it is a new methodology that is not available to other patients that can help me get rid of the cancer.
“And also, I can be part of the team that can provide proof of concept for this new methodology, and the faster it would be implemented around the world, the more people will be saved.”
Racz had six consecutive injections five minutes apart over 30 minutes at the National Institute for Health Research UCLH Clinical Research Facility on Tuesday.
Each spike contained different RNA strands. He will get the vaccine every week for six consecutive weeks, and then every three weeks for 54 weeks.
Lee said, “We hope adding this additional treatment will stop the cancer from coming back, because a lot of the time for lung cancer patients, even after surgery and radiation, it does come back.”
He added: “I have been in lung cancer research for 40 years now. When I started in the 1990s, nobody believed that chemotherapy worked.
“We now know about 20-30% [of patients] remain alive with stage 4 with immunotherapy and now we want to improve survival rates. So hopefully this mRNA vaccine, on top of immunotherapy, can provide the extra boost.
“We hope to continue to phase 2, phase 3, and then hope it becomes standard of care worldwide and saves many lung cancer patients.”
The Guardian revealed in May that thousands of patients in England would be fast-tracked after ground-breaking trials of cancer vaccines in a revolutionary world-first NHS “matchmaking” scheme to save lives.
Under the scheme, patients who meet the eligibility criteria will be given access to clinical trials for the vaccines which experts say represent a new dawn in cancer treatment.
Lord Vallance, the science minister, praised the launch of the lung cancer vaccine trial. “This approach has the potential to save the lives of thousands diagnosed with lung cancer each year,” he said. “We support our researchers so that they continue to be an integral part of projects that produce breakthrough therapies, like this one.”
Racz hopes that once his treatment is over, he can run again and achieve his lifelong ambition: to complete the London Marathon.
