In a conversation with CancerNetwork®, Catherine J. Wu, MD, spoke about the ongoing development of cancer vaccines as a potentially “cross-cutting” therapeutic strategy for treating patients with cancer.

Wu, chief of the Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies and a Lavine Family Chair for Preventative Cancer Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, discussed how neoantigens may show promise as possible targets for immunotherapy, which may make it feasible to treat broad swaths of patient populations through vaccination. Specifically, she highlighted the KRAS mutation as a potential area of focus based on its frequent expression in diseases such as gastrointestinal cancers, myeloma, and other solid tumors.

Findings from previous studies published in recent years also appear to support further research on the use of vaccines to manage cancer. For example, Wu brought up a study conducted by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, in which investigators evaluated the potential utility of a personalized RNA neoantigen for those with pancreatic cancer. Data from this study indicated that the median recurrence-free survival was not reached in patients with vaccine-expanded T cells compared with 13.4 months in those without vaccine-expanded T cells (P = .003).

“There have been very promising studies,” Wu said. “There are many conceptual reasons for why cancer vaccines would partner well with other forms of immunotherapy such as immune checkpoint blockade. Increasingly, one can envision how it can be coupled together with cellular therapy.”

In terms of other research, Wu described how ongoing efforts aim to meet various time and cost considerations as vaccine-based therapy becomes more widely adopted in the cancer field. She underscored the necessity of developing a rapid manufacturing process and deploying vaccines to patients as quickly as possible. Additionally, she highlighted the progress in developing mRNA-based vaccines in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that this modality may hold promise in the management of cancer.

Rojas LA, Sethna Z, Soares KC, et al. Personalized RNA neoantigen vaccines stimulate T cells in pancreatic cancer. Nature. 2023;618(7963):144-150. doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06063-y