This week I visited a place that I did not know yet existed: A cancer lab focused on a new vaccine for pancreatic cancer. I want to give a shout out to the scientists who are bringing new hope to patients with pancreatic cancer, the third deadliest cancer with an estimated 50,500 deaths in 2023.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this experimental but promising treatment is that it is a vaccine. ELI-002 7P is an investigational therapeutic peptide cancer vaccine developed by Elicio Therapeutics. It’s an off-the-shelf vaccine, which means that it is not made from patients’ individual tumors.
The vaccine is intended to treat cancers driven by seven common mutations in KRAS, which is present in about 30% of all solid tumor cancers and 85-95% of KRAS mutated pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma patients.
It works by sending signals to the immune system cells, T cells, which continue to increase in relevance and value in the cancer treatment world. Stay tuned. This one looks very promising. Yes, those T cells are really getting a great reputation. They are literally keeping me alive.
Meantime, our writer Clark Jones, PhD, has a terrific companion piece to mine about how vaccines in general are finally coming of age. It has taken many more years than most hoped. But Clark’s take is a positive one that digs in a bit to reveal what is here and what is coming. As he says, the era of the cancer vaccines is here.
And last but certainly not least, Tyler Neese’s somewhat controversial piece about cell donors socioeconomic status had all of us in the office talking about the potential issues this brings. For example, “suboptimal access” to cancer care is associated with adverse clinical outcomes, an increased risk of recurrence, and “poorer disease-free and overall survival.”
But while the correlation between clinical outcomes and some of the key factors associated with a person’s socioeconomic status may seem logical, surprisingly these factors can even impact the way in which an individual’s donated cells interact with their recipient. That’s the conclusion reached by researchers from the University of Minnesota Medical School – the socioeconomic status of a cell donor can determine the outcome of treatment for certain cancers in the host.
Pancreatic Cancer Vaccine: A Potentially Enormous Breakthrough For Patients
Cancer Vaccines: Challenges of the Past and Treatment of the Future
