A personalized vaccine against kidney cancer has successfully completed the first phase of clinical trials: all nine patients developed an immune response, and no disease recurrences were recorded, according to infohub.kz.
An international team of researchers developed an individualized vaccine for patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma. The results of the phase 1 trial were published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature.
The study involved nine people with stage 3 and 4 disease who had previously undergone surgery to remove the tumor. For each patient, specialists created a unique drug based on neoantigens — protein fragments isolated from the removed tumor tissue. Five participants additionally received the immunotherapeutic drug ipilimumab.
During the observation period, which averaged three years and four months, none of the participants experienced a recurrence of the disease. All nine patients developed a durable immune response, and in seven people, T cells successfully recognized cells from their own tumor.
The drug demonstrated a high level of safety: the most common side effects were injection site reactions and short-term flu-like symptoms. No serious adverse events were recorded.
Co-authors David Braun of Yale University and Toni Choueiri of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute emphasize the need for further research. According to them, the small sample size and lack of a control group do not yet allow us to state with certainty that the absence of recurrences is caused solely by vaccination.