It is undoubtedly still a little early to talk about a revolution, but the hope of a “therapeutic vaccine” against the recurrence of cancers is no longer a simple dream. In the space of a few months, at the beginning of 2023, four clinical trials confirmed this. At the American Association for Cancer Research Congress in Orlando (Florida) in April, the biotech company Moderna and the Merck laboratory announced the final and promising results of their phase 2B trial in high-risk melanoma cancer. risk of recurrence (stage 3 or 4), thanks to a therapeutic messenger RNA vaccine, a technology popularized during the Covid-19 pandemic.
After complete surgical resection, 107 out of 157 patients received nine doses of vaccine and standard immunotherapy treatment in this type of cancer for about a year, the others received immunotherapy only. After eighteen months of observation, a 44% reduction in the risk of recurrence or death was noted. “We also demonstrated a reduction in the risk of distant metastases and/or death by 65%”, welcomes Arnaud Chéret, medical director of Moderna France. All this without any major side effects. These data have not yet been the subject of a scientific publication, but the laboratory announced in July that a phase 3 trial would be launched before the end of the year.
A month later, BioNTech, another major player in messenger RNA, reported in review Nature of a phase 1 clinical trial, conducted with the Swiss Roche, of a vaccine targeting pancreatic cancer. Then, it was at the American Society of Clinical Oncology congress, which is held each year in June in Chicago (Illinois), that Transgene presented promising conclusions for head and neck (ENT) cancer and for papillomavirus cancer. (HPV16), thanks to its viral vector vaccines containing a weakened version of the vaccinia virus (affecting bovids and horses, harmless to humans). Finally, in September, Ose Immunotherapeutics made headlines with its vaccine against advanced lung cancer. “In ten years, we will perhaps look at 2023 as the start of a new revolution in oncology”, predicts Nicolas Poirier, the general director of this start-up. With a major advantage, which all these trials underline: very low adverse effects in an area where treatments are often toxic.
A vaccine against cancer? The very idea may seem incongruous. All of our familiar vaccines work prophylactically to prevent disease. In the case of cancer, there is indeed such a preventive vaccine, that against papillomavirus infections, responsible for example for cervical cancer. With the therapeutic vaccine, it is indeed a treatment, administered to patients who already suffer from cancer. But its principle is the same: induce an immune response and let our body fight the disease itself. Not by means of antibodies, the main weapons of vaccine immunity, but thanks to T lymphocytes, these killer cells capable of infiltrating a tumor then destroying cancer cells.
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