Ellie Kemp
A vaccine that could help fight one of the deadliest forms of cancer is in the works - and could one day become a reality.
Scientists have been working hard to help cure various forms of the disease for decades now.
And they could be on the edge of a breakthrough, with a pancreatic cancer vaccine delivering never-seen-before results in preclinical trials.
Pancreatic cancer accounts for three percent of all cancers in the US and eight percent of all cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.
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Around 67,440 people - 34,950 men and 32,490 women - are forecast to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2025.
The most common form is pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) - the deadliest and most stubborn manifestation of the disease.
While the exact cause of PDAC is not always known, there are a number of risk factors, including genetic mutations, chronic pancreatitis, and lifestyle factors including smoking, alcohol and obesity.
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PDAC has a poor prognosis as it presents so late, with early-stage symptoms often going undetected.
And while treatments including chemotherapy and surgery can extend survival, they are rarely able to cure the aggressive disease.
But now, researchers at Case Western Reserve University may have just changed the game.
It's said that prevention is better than cure - and scientists have developed a vaccine that trains the immune system to hunt and destroy 'bad' cells.
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The scientists created nanoparticles carrying antigens, which teach the immune system to recognize and attack pancreatic cancer cells.
This encourages the body to create its own T cells, which are equipped to better fight against the cancer, while building up 'immune memory' for longer-term protection.
The researchers plan to combine the vaccine with immune checkpoint inhibitors, a type of drug that stops cancer from 'turning off' the immune system.
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It delivered 'never seen before' results, with more than half of the test subjects remaining completely cancer-free for months.
“Pancreatic cancer is super aggressive,” said Zheng-Rong Lu, the M. Frank Rudy and Margaret C. Rudy Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Case School of Engineering. “So it came as a surprise that our approach works so well.”
So far, the jab has only been tested on 'preclinical models,' which could include cell-based and animal models.
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“We’ve shown that our vaccine generated immune memory in preclinical models," Lu added. "If we could do that in patients, we could prevent PDAC before tumors start forming, so the vaccines could be either therapeutic or preventative.”
The researchers received a $3.27 million grant over five years from the National Cancer Institute to continue studying how vaccines could help treat pancreatic cancer in lab models.
Lu hopes to work with companies to test the safety of the vaccine in more models before starting trials in humans.