30/04/2026
🧬 A personalized cancer vaccine is showing rare long-term promise against pancreatic cancer.
In a small phase 1 trial, 16 patients with pancreatic cancer received surgery, immunotherapy, chemotherapy, and a custom mRNA vaccine made from mutations found in their own tumors. The goal was not to prevent cancer, but to train the immune system to recognize and attack any remaining cancer cells.
The most striking result came from the immune responders: 8 of 16 patients developed vaccine-targeted T cells, and 7 of those 8 were still alive 4–6 years after surgery. Among the 8 who did not respond, only 2 were still alive, with a median survival of 3.4 years.
This is still early evidence from a very small trial, and a larger phase 2 study is now underway. But for pancreatic cancer, where the five-year survival rate is around 13%, these results are genuinely encouraging.
📃 RESEARCH PAPER
📌 Sethna et al., “RNA neoantigen vaccines prime long-lived CD8+ T cells in pancreatic cancer”, Nature (2025)