A clinical trial showed that an mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccine against cancer, developed at the University of Florida, in the United States, boosted the immune system’s response to attack glioblastoma, the most aggressive and lethal type of brain tumor. The results of the study were published in the scientific journal Cell.
The trial was carried out with four adult patients and obtained results that reinforce the findings of another study carried out with 10 canine patients suffering from naturally occurring brain tumors, as well as results obtained in research carried out with rats. The discovery will now be tested in a Phase 1 pediatric clinical trial for brain cancer.
The vaccine used in the research uses mRNA and lipid nanoparticles — technology similar to vaccines against Covid-19. The difference between this cancer vaccine is its personalization: in its composition, the patient’s own tumor cells are used to create a personalized vaccine and a newly designed complex delivery mechanism.
“Instead of injecting single particles, we inject clusters of particles that wrap around each other like onions, like a bag full of onions,” explains Elias Sayour, pediatric oncologist at UF Health and author of the study. “The reason we did this, in the context of cancer, is that these clusters alert the immune system in a much more profound way than single particles.”
According to Sayour, one of the “most impressive” findings of the study is how quickly the vaccine, administered intravenously, stimulated a vigorous immune system response to reject the tumor.
“In less than 48 hours, we could see these tumors changing from what we call ‘cold’ – very few immune cells, very muted immune response – to a ‘hot’ and very active immune response,” he says.
