A novel cancer vaccine to treat non-small cell lung cancer is being tested for the first time in a patient at University College London Hospitals in the UK.
The mRNA vaccine, developed by the German firm BioNTech, works by priming the immune system to recognize and fight cancer cells, according to the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Research.
Unlike chemotherapy, the vaccine reduces the risk of toxicity to healthy, non-cancerous cells by enhancing the immune responses to target cancer cells, researchers said.
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The research facility started a similar trial for melanoma immunotherapy.
For the latest vaccine trial, the researchers plan to enroll 130 participants with different stages of non-small cell lung cancer across 34 sites in seven countries. The first participant is 67-year-old Janusz Racz of London, who received the treatment at the National Institute for Health and Care Research's Clinical Research Facility.
The clinical study will test if the new treatment is safe and well-tolerated, is effective on its own at targeting tumors and can work with established treatments, like chemotherapy, to target tumors more effectively.
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“Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, with an estimated 1.8 million deaths in 2020,” said University College London Hospitals consultant medical oncologist Siow Ming Lee, who leads the national study, in a statement. “We are now entering this very exciting new era of mRNA-based immunotherapy clinical trials to investigate the treatment of lung cancer.”
Lung and bronchus cancer accounted for 125,070 (or 20%) of cancer deaths in the U.S. alone this year, according to data from the National Cancer Institute.