Doctors have begun trialling 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 about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor.
Now experts are testing a new jab that instructs the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells – then prevents them 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, has launched across 34 research sites in seven countries: the UK, US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey.
The UK has six sites, located in England and Wales, with the first UK patient to receive the vaccine having their initial dose on Tuesday.
Overall, about 130 patients – from early-stage before surgery or radiotherapy, to late-stage disease or recurrent cancer – will be enrolled to have the jab alongside immunotherapy. About 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 tumour markers from NSCLC to prime the body to fight cancer cells expressing these markers.
The aim is to strengthen a person’s immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells untouched, unlike chemotherapy.
“We are now entering this very exciting new era of mRNA-based immunotherapy clinical trials to investigate the treatment of lung cancer,” said Prof Siow Ming Lee, a consultant medical oncologist at University College London hospitals NHS foundation trust (UCLH), which is leading the trial in the UK.
“It’s simple 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 have the vaccine in the UK. He was diagnosed in May and soon after started chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
The scientist, who specialises in AI, said his profession inspired him to take part in the trial. “I am a scientist too, 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 would be very beneficial for me, because it’s a new methodology not available for other patients that can help me to get rid of the cancer.
“And also, I can be a part of the team that can provide proof of concept for this new methodology, and the faster it would be implemented across the world, more people will be saved.”
Racz received six consecutive injections five minutes apart over 30 minutes at the National Institute for Health Research UCLH Clinical Research Facility on Tuesday.
Each jab 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 coming back because a lot of time for lung cancer patients, even after surgery and radiation, it does come back.”
He added: “I’ve been in lung cancer research for 40 years now. When I started in the 1990s, nobody believed chemotherapy worked.
“We now know about 20-30% [of patients] stay alive with stage 4 with immunotherapy and now we want to improve survival rates. So hopefully this mRNA vaccine, on top of immunotherapy, might provide the extra boost.
“We hope to go on to phase 2, phase 3, and then hope it becomes standard of care worldwide and saves lots of lung cancer patients.”
The Guardian revealed in May that thousands of patients in England were to be fast-tracked into groundbreaking 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 gain access to clinical trials for the vaccines that experts say represent a new dawn in cancer treatment.
Lord Vallance, the science minister, hailed the launch of the lung cancer vaccine trial. “This approach has the potential to save the lives of thousands diagnosed with lung cancer every year,” he said. “We back our researchers so that they continue to be an integral part of projects that produce groundbreaking therapies, like this one.”
Racz hopes once his treatment is over he can get back to running and achieve his lifetime ambition: completing the London Marathon.