Cancer vaccine with minimal side effects nearing Phase 3 clinical trials

Each shot would be completely personalized to the patient.

…

Wagner’s TLPO cancer vaccine has been tested in hundreds of patients with advanced forms of melanoma in Phase 2 clinical trials.

The most recent data presented at an academic conference showed nearly 95% of people given only the vaccine were still alive three years after starting treatment and 64% were still disease-free. Among the most advanced forms of melanoma, disease-free survival after three years for people with stage III disease was 60% in the vaccine-only group, compared to about 39% in the placebo group. Disease-free survival for those with stage IV disease was about 68% in the vaccine-only group, and zero in the placebo group.

The most common side effects were redness or pain at the injection site, fever and fatigue after the injection – similar to other vaccines that stimulate an immune response.

MxM111,
MxM111 avatar

Placebo group for stage 3 cancer? How does it work? Is not it unethical?

Machinist3359,

While I don't know the case for this specific study, but you're assuming the vaccine is safe and works.

Generally though if it is shown to help they'll get it asap

MNByChoice, (edited )

Disease-free survival for those with stage IV disease was about 68% in the vaccine-only group, and zero in the placebo group.

The placebo group will not be getting the vaccine.

Edit: The people not in Stage 4, may well get the advanced treatment.

MxM111,
MxM111 avatar

Exactly, and I thought there are alternative treatments in case of melanoma. Not giving those is clearly unethical. Stage 4 melanoma 5 year survival rates are not that bad, and clearly more than zero with treatment.

MNByChoice,

You are right about the survival rates.

The paper is short, but a number of the patients had prior immunotherapy treatments (not all, and the rates are broken out by treatment, not by cancer stage.) The paper also does not seem to include the 0% survival rate for the Stage IV placebo group. (Or I missed it.)

I am making up things, but it is possible that other treatments had already failed and this was a “hail marry” for the Stage IV people.

TardisBeaker,

They make it sound as if this is new, but this method has been studied for decades… My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in Jan of 2013. He happened to get into clinical trials that basically had him “living with cancer” for 5 years. It wasn’t until the last few months that the cancer outpaced the drugs and took over, invading his brain, then it was only a matter of a very short time before the brain cancer ruptured & killed him. But prior to that, he got 5 years. The drugs he was on??? Targeted immunotherapy including a lot of mRNA vaccine therapy. (Turns out he was a guinea pig for the technology that would be used in Covid vaccines. He always hoped his clinical trials would help future patients, he just had no idea how far reaching that would really be.)

The problem is, cancer is in essence a mutation machine, which means it quickly outpaces our ability to create the vaccines. I think we’ll get there; just going to take a while before we learn how to keep up.

BigMacHole,

But how will Hospital CEOS and Pharma CEOs make money if they Cure Cancer instead of just Treat Cancer?

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

The longer people live, the more cancers they will ultimately develop. Win/win.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Hospital CEOs don’t have a say in this and there will also still be a need for hospitals even if there is no cancer.

IHeartBadCode,
IHeartBadCode avatar

For melanoma at the moment.

However, it is a TLPO vaccine which teaches your immune system one of the tricks cancer uses to evade being taken care of by your white blood cells. So it's application could be huge.

That said, as you might have noticed, it has to be personalized for the patient as it targets the specific way your cancer is hiding itself. Personalized medicine is still very expensive, but quickly being able to ID the specific sequence of DNA that gave your cancer it's hiding ability could be something that computers help us with one day.

So if this does get approved, it will likely be incredibly expensive per patient.

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

Almost every medical treatment we have was incredibly expensive when it first appeared, so I'm not terribly upset by that. As you say, the fundamentals of this are something that can be made a lot cheaper with advancing technology and mass adoption.

Szymon,

I know it’s for scientific purpose and all, and they signed off on it, but what a bum fucking deal to get a placebo in that stage 4 group.

lightnegative,

It could’ve gone the other way with worse outcomes for the medicine group.

In that case, you might want to be in the placebo group.

Either way it’s a gamble

Tvkan,

In later trials, drugs aren’t compared against placebo, but a standard therapy regimen.

TardisBeaker,

A lot of times they don’t do placebo once the trial gets to that stage. My dad with cancer was a treatment guinea pig & one of the study stipulations was that they wouldn’t get placebo. Too cruel to get their hopes up. ETA: I know this one states it had placebo group. And I understand the reason for it, obviously. Just saying my dad’s experience was they promised no placebo group bc it was so late stage in testing.

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

I've seen news of other experiments like this where once the treatment was so obviously working they flipped the placebo group over to the treatment as well out of compassionate grounds, but perhaps in this case the treatment is so expensive right now that they simply didn't have the resources to do that. So perhaps they went "our grant allows us to produce at most X number of doses of the real treatment for this, so let's take on 2X patients for it," and ended up saving the largest number of people they could have.

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