Up to 10,000 patients in Britain are set to receive potentially groundbreaking cancer vaccines, as part of a partnership with the creators of the Covid mRNA jabs.
BioNTech, whose technology was used in the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, is now applying the same technique to defeating cancer.
After preliminary trials showed that mRNA vaccines can be tailored to attack patients’ own cancers and prevent them returning, the company wants to prove the method at scale.
The government announced yesterday that it had signed an understanding with the company to carry out a trial of this approach on the NHS. BioNTech said part of the attraction of the UK for the company was how quickly it had been able to move during the pandemic.
“The UK successfully delivered Covid-19 vaccines so quickly because the National Health Service, academia, the regulator and the private sector worked together in an exemplary way,” Ugur Sahin, the co-founder of BioNTech, said. “This agreement is a result of the lessons learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic as we all experience that drug development can be accelerated without cutting corners if everyone works seamlessly together. Today’s agreement shows that we are committed to do the same for cancer patients.”
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Together with his wife Ozlem Tureci, Sahin created BioNTech with the intention of making personalised vaccines against cancer, in particular to prevent its return. One of the reasons cancer can spread is that the immune system is unable to spot it. This means that after surgery, the remaining cells can find places where they are able to keep on multiplying — leading to metastasis.
The idea of a cancer vaccine is that if the body can be trained to spot the proteins unique to the cancer cells, in much the same way as it was trained to spot those in the coronavirus, then the immune system will attack and destroy the remaining cells.
Last summer a small trial in pancreatic cancer patients, who received a vaccine tailored to their precise disease, had positive results. Before Christmas, a larger trial by Moderna, another mRNA company, found that the vaccines almost halved the chance of melanoma skin cancer returning.
Now researchers want to prove its effectiveness at scale and in many different cancers. BioNTech aims to run randomised controlled trials — testing the vaccines against standard care — in a range of cancers, with the first patient to be enrolled this year.
The government has previously said that cancer vaccines would form part of the country’s long-term strategy to tackle the disease. Steve Barclay, the health and social care secretary, said that the hope is that this approach could improve the NHS’s cancer survival rates.
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“Once cancer is detected, we need to ensure the best possible treatments are available as soon as possible, including for breast, lung and pancreatic cancer,” he said. “BioNTech helped lead the world on a Covid-19 vaccine and they share our commitment to scientific advancement.
“This partnership will mean that, from as early as September, our patients will be among the first to participate in trials and tests to provide targeted, personalised and precision treatments using transformative new therapies to both treat the existing cancer and help stop it returning.”
