A PIONEERING skin cancer vaccine being trialled on the NHS could halve the risk of death or relapse, according to a study.
It’s an early boost to the health service’s cancer vaccine rollout platform, announced last week.
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The infusion was tested in 157 patients following surgery for stage 3 or 4 melanoma skin cancer.
Moderna’s vaccine is the first of its kind to tailor treatment to each individual patient, using Covid jab-like mRNA technology.
Experts led by New York University found that it reduced the risk of the cancer growing back or the patient dying by 49% compared with standard treatment with the drug pembrolizumab.
After two and a half years, 75 percent of those who received the vaccine and medication were still cancer-free, compared with 56 percent who received medication alone.
The head of the study, Jeffrey Weber, said it showed a “durable and significant long-term survival benefit.”
Speaking at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference, Cancer Research UK’s chief medical officer, Professor Charles Swanton, called the results “extremely impressive”.
He said: “It’s promising and I hope and expect that we will see data like this in solid tumors like bowel cancer and lung cancer.
“The new vaccine approach is another piece of the puzzle that will hopefully allow more patients to be cured or fewer patients to relapse.
“Ultimately, it will contribute to survival rates continually improving over the coming decades and beyond.”
Melanoma is the least common but most deadly form of skin cancer and there are 17,000 cases and 2,400 deaths every year in Britain.
About nine out of 10 tumors are caused by sun damage to the skin.
The mRNA-4157 injection began testing in the UK last August when Steve Young, 52, from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, received it to stop his tumor growing back after surgery.
NHS bosses are excited about the potential of cancer vaccines and last week launched a new system to link patients to pioneering clinical trials.
NHS England director of cancer Professor Peter Johnson said: “We see vaccines as a very important development in cancer treatment.”
ANALYSIS: Preparing for the future
By Sam Blanchard, Health Correspondent
Cancer vaccines are an exciting prospect because they use the body’s own immune system to fight tumors, reducing collateral damage to healthy cells that poses a risk from surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
We hope this means people can be treated for longer without fear of disabling or even deadly side effects, improving their chances of survival.
Research is still at an early stage, so the number of patients who will be able to try the vaccines in the coming years will probably be small.
They will also likely be very expensive, as there is a lot of back and forth between the clinic and the laboratory, as each vaccine is adapted to each patient.
But the NHS Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad will help pharmaceutical companies study and develop vaccines, build the NHS infrastructure if they are used routinely in the future – and offer hope to patients along the way. .
A second study revealed at the ASCO meeting found that another vaccine reduced the risk of relapse in breast cancer survivors.
Scientists at the University of Vienna tested a treatment called tecemotide on 400 women with early-stage breast cancer.
They found that 81 percent were still alive and cancer-free after seven years, compared to 65 percent who only had standard chemotherapy.
Dr. Heather Shaw, the trial’s coordinating investigator, previously described the development as “one of the most exciting things we’ve seen in a long time.”
“These things are extremely technical and precisely generated for the patient; patients are really excited about them,” she added.
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The signs of skin cancer you should never ignore
IF you’ve seen a persistent wart or mark somewhere on your skin, it would be smart not to rule it out.
This is especially the case if it looks a little strange.
Over the past three decades, melanoma skin cancer rates have more than doubled in the UK, a trend that looks set to continue.
At the moment, Cancer research in the UK estimates that around 16,700 Britons are diagnosed with melanoma annually, which equates to around 46 cases per day.
The ABCDE rule can be followed to assess the health of a mole. If your mole falls into the following, it’s worth checking:
- Asymmetrical – melanomas usually have two very different halves and are irregular in shape
- Border – melanomas usually have a notched or irregular border
- Wcolors – melanomas are usually a mixture of two or more colors
- Ddiameter – most melanomas are usually more than 6 mm in diameter
- ANDexpansion or It iselevation – a mole that changes size over time is more likely to be melanoma
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
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