World's first vaccine trials against lung cancer launched in seven countries | Lung cancer

Doctors have begun testing the world's first mRNA vaccine against lung cancer on patients, with experts hailing the vaccine's “groundbreaking” potential to save thousands of lives.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Around 1.8 million people die of lung cancer each year. Survival rates are particularly low in patients with advanced forms of the disease, where the tumors have already spread.

Now experts are testing a new vaccine that instructs the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells – preventing them from ever returning. The vaccine, called BNT116, from BioNTech, is intended to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease.

The Phase 1 clinical trial, the first human study of BNT116, has been initiated at 34 research sites in seven countries: the UK, the USA, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey.

There are six sites in England and Wales in the UK. The first British patients to receive the vaccine will receive their first dose on Tuesday.

In total, around 130 patients – from early stage before surgery or radiotherapy to advanced stage disease or recurrent cancer – will be enrolled in the trial to receive the vaccine in addition to immunotherapy. Around 20 of them will be from the UK.

The vaccine uses messenger RNA (mRNA), similar to the Covid-19 vaccines, and works by presenting NSCLC tumor markers to the immune system to prepare the body to fight cancer cells that express these markers.

The goal is to boost a person's immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells untouched, unlike chemotherapy.

“We are now entering this very exciting new era of clinical trials of mRNA-based immunotherapy to investigate the treatment of lung cancer,” said Prof Siow Ming Lee, consultant medical oncologist at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH), who is leading the UK trial.

“It's easy to administer, and you can select specific antigens in the cancer cell and then target them. This technology is the next big phase in cancer treatment.”

Janusz Racz, 67, from London, was the first person to be vaccinated in the UK. He was diagnosed in May and began chemotherapy and radiotherapy soon after.

The scientist, who specializes in artificial intelligence, said his profession inspired him to take part in the study. “I am also a scientist and I understand that the progress of science – especially in medicine – lies in people being willing to participate in such research,” he said.

He added: “It would be very useful for me because it is a new method that is not available to other patients and that can help me get rid of the cancer.

“And I can also be part of the team that can provide proof of concept for this new method. And the faster it is implemented worldwide, the more people can be saved.”

Racz received six consecutive injections, five minutes apart, over a 30-minute period at the National Institute for Health Research (UCLH) Clinical Research Facility on Tuesday.

Each shot contained different strands of RNA. He will receive the vaccine every week for six weeks and then every three weeks for 54 weeks.

Lee said: “We hope that this additional treatment will prevent the cancer from recurring, because it is common for lung cancer patients to have their cancer return, even after surgery and radiation.”

He added: “I have been involved in lung cancer research for 40 years now. When I started in the 1990s, nobody believed that chemotherapy worked.

“We now know that 20 to 30% [of patients] Staying alive with immunotherapy in stage 4 and now we want to improve survival rates. Hopefully this mRNA vaccine can provide that extra boost in addition to immunotherapy.

“We hope that we can move on to Phase 2 and Phase 3 and that the method will then become the standard of care worldwide and save the lives of many lung cancer patients.”

In May, the Guardian revealed that a revolutionary and world-first NHS matchmaking programme was set to enrol thousands of patients in England through the fast-track approval scheme for groundbreaking cancer vaccine trials in a bid to save lives.

Under this program, patients who meet the eligibility criteria will have access to clinical trials for the vaccines, which experts believe represent a new approach to cancer treatment.

Lord Vallance, the Science Minister, welcomed the launch of the lung cancer vaccine trial. “This approach has the potential to save the lives of thousands of people diagnosed with lung cancer each year,” he said. “We support our researchers so that they continue to be an integral part of projects that produce groundbreaking therapies such as this one.”

Racz hopes that once his treatment is complete, he will be able to start running again and fulfill his lifelong dream of completing the London Marathon.