This is the first time that this immunotherapy, made by German biotech company BioNTech, has been studied in a clinical trial for lung cancer in the UK.
Janusz Racz, 67, is the first person to participate in the trial as a scientist. “I decided to participate because I hope the vaccine will provide a defense against cancer cells, and that my participation in this research could help other people in the future and help make this treatment more widely available,” he said.
An experimental immunotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), known as BNT116, uses messenger RNA (mRNA) to deliver common tumor markers from NSCLC to the patient’s immune system, with the goal of helping it recognize and fight cancer cells that express these markers.
The experimental vaccine is designed to specifically boost immune responses against targets primarily expressed by cancer cells, reducing the risk of toxicity to healthy cells, unlike chemotherapy, which mostly affects both cancerous and healthy cells.
“Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, with an estimated 1.8 million deaths in 2020,” said Siu Ming Lee, a consultant medical oncologist at University College London Hospital, who is leading the study. “We are now entering this very exciting new era of clinical trials of mRNA-based immunotherapy to investigate the treatment of lung cancer. We hope this will provide an opportunity to further improve outcomes for patients, both early and advanced.”
The trial includes patients at different stages of non-small cell lung cancer, from early stage before surgery or radiation therapy (stage 2 and 3) to late stage disease (stage 4) or recurrent cancer.
The trial aims to determine the safe dose of BNT116 as a single treatment, as well as whether BNT116 has a synergistic antitumor effect when given with chemotherapy or immunotherapy.
Approximately 130 participants will be enrolled in the study across 34 research sites in 7 countries, with 6 sites selected in the UK.
Source: uclh.nhs.uk
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2024-08-30 19:50:14
