The world’s first mRNA lung cancer vaccine has been hailed as a breakthrough by specialists globally and has started trials in other countries. With lung cancer being the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, accounting for about 1.9 million fatalities annually, the new treatment has the potential to save thousands of lives.
The new jab, made by BioNTech, instructs the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells, and prevent them from returning, U.K. daily The Guardian reported. It is specifically designed to fight the most common form of the disease – non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Trials of the new drug have now commenced in Poland, Prof. Dariusz Kowalski of the National Oncology Institute told the national press agency, PAP.
“Patients who have had radical operational treatment (those with a chance of long-term remission) are qualified for clinical trials of the mRNA vaccine for non-small cell lung cancer,” Prof. Kowalski said. If a tumor sample shows a sufficiently advanced stage of the disease, he explained, the patient will receive chemotherapy, as before.
During their treatment, a tissue sample from the tumor will be sent to a U.S. laboratory for the genes responsible for the disease’s development in a given patient to be identified. The mRNA drug is then made on the basis of that data, individually for each patient. The vaccine will then train the patient’s immune system to recognize the lung cancer cells and destroy them.
“The trial is still recruiting lung cancer patients who can be treated surgically and meet the eligibility criteria,” Prof. Kowalski told PAP. “This is a very promising method and though it is too soon to provide specifics, the initial results are very encouraging.”
Similar trials are also being conducted in Poland for melanoma patients and Prof. Kowalski said trials are also planned in the future for patients with metastatic cancer.
Poland is one of only seven countries trialing the new drug, the others being Germany, Hungary, Spain, Turkey, the U.K. and the U.S. Last week, the first patient in the U.K. received the treatment, The Guardian reported. He was a 67-year-old Pole, Janusz Racz.
