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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGood News: First-ever mRNA vaccine shows promise in halting pancreatic cancer! Dr. Vinod Balachandran's team at
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Good News: First-ever mRNA vaccine shows promise in halting pancreatic cancer!
Dr. Vinod Balachandran’s team at Memorial Sloan Kettering developed a personalized mRNA vaccine that teaches the immune system to fight pancreatic tumors. In a clinical trial, 50% of patients saw delayed recurrence, offering new hope for long-term remission!
Could mRNA vaccines revolutionize cancer treatment?
https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/first-ever-mrna-vaccine-halts-pancreatic-cancer-in-its-tracks/?s=09
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spanone
(142,047 posts)
K&R
Fla Dem
(27,763 posts)
BlueSpot
(1,325 posts)Rec
MustLoveBeagles
(17,205 posts)
canetoad
(20,998 posts)Is on one of the trials.
He was diagnosed a year ago. His latest results say he is 'cancer free'. I was extremely upset when his (American) wife told me but things are looking up and he looks fit and well.
StarryNite
(12,167 posts)
dchill
(42,660 posts)
OnionPatch
(6,343 posts)Pancreatic cancer is such a nightmare. I lost my husband to it four years ago. I'd love for no one to have to go through that hell someday.
evolves
(5,874 posts)What a breakthrough!
Dem2theMax
(11,005 posts)Have lost family and friends to this horrible disease.
Hoping those in the future will not have to go through what they did.
SunSeeker
(58,374 posts)That was 2008. I remember her doctor at UCLA telling me there really isn't much they can do for pancreatic cancer, especially advanced pancreatic cancer, which it almost always is when it finally causes noticeable symptoms.
I hope this mRNA therapy is available to everyone soon. It is a really horrible cancer. I would not wish my mom's last 2 months of life on anyone.
BaronChocula
(4,736 posts)Only my mom got to 14 months after diagnosis because they found it early while looking for something else. 
AverageOldGuy
(4,152 posts)In 2006-7 I, too, lost my mother to pancreatic cancer. She was 82 -- she rolled out at 5:30 every morning, drove herself and another church lady to the YMCA, and swam enough laps to make 1/4 mile!! Came home, brewed a pot of Community Dark Roast coffee, made a few biscuits, scrambled two eggs, peeled an orange, homemade fig preserves on the biscuits, and that was breakfast.
Diagnosed on August 6, 2006, we lost her on March 18, 2007.
She speaks to me every day, mostly to remind me to "Do the right thing."
Her favorite saying was one she inherited from her father: " Jesus never met an unimportant person." And she treated EVERY SINGLE PERSON SHE MET that way.
And I'll bet your mother was the same.
SunSeeker
(58,374 posts)
GoodRaisin
(11,053 posts)watching it take her and literally nothing we tried to do would help her. It’s very encouraging to learn that there is a treatment that is offering hope for this.
SunSeeker
(58,374 posts) GoodRaisin
(11,053 posts)Sorry you had to go through it too.
PlanetBev
(4,415 posts)I miss her everyday. I hope to see an end to this killer in my lifetime.
electric_blue68
(27,258 posts)
C Moon
(13,735 posts)
kimbutgar
(27,543 posts)If it can be stopped thank goodness.
pat_k
(13,834 posts)Just wonderful.
So many have lost friends and family to pancreatic cancer. I'll always miss Andy Stephenson. I can't believe it's been 19 years since he lost his battle with pancreatic cancer.
LudwigPastorius
(14,988 posts)since these drugs are bespoke, the price will be huge, and I'd bet anything that shitheel insurance companies aren't going to want to pay the costs.
I have a friend who is receiving this kind of customized drug therapy for prostate cancer, and it's keeping him alive. Fortunately for him, he can afford the costs of the treatment and the flights to Germany and the Mayo Clinic.
Akakoji
(563 posts)This is a misleading public relations story from a heavily subsidized PR new site. Released in May. If further results such as those you suggest were obtained it would knock everything out of the news. There is no record of any clinical trial being reviewed by peers and published anywhere that demonstrated "halting pancreatic cancer". Lack of recurrence in 8 people (50%) at 13.4 months is barely a proof of concept trial. At this point titres of neo-antigens could be deemed a surrogate marker, but even the earlier epidemiological work does not have the power to create a correlation. I truly hope it does in the future.
The original study published in Nature is open access: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06063-y
There is no question that it might have helped in inducing T cell activity - in 50% of people that were given the bespoke cocktail - and it might have correlated with a delayed (13.4 months) recurrence of what you call pancreatic cancer (PDAC), but you missed a very important aspect: recurrence. And, people that create this response - known as long term survivors - do it without any intervention such as the regimen studied. Obviously, the idea was to mimic the immunological response of long term survivors. Overall survival rate in PDAC at 5 years is a miserable 10% at best, often following dissection and harsh chemotherapy that is basically worthless.
I'm glad they actually tried this, eagerly await the outcomes at 3, 4 and 5 years, and I'm also glad they found 16 people that agreed to participate in the trial.
Until I hear that a Phase 2 or 2/3 study for a disease that is the seventh largest cause of cancer death in the world is planned by the company - at a cost of billions of dollars - I'm going to temper my expectations that we'll see this as an established treatment for at least a decade. Then again, a trial of 300 people with similar results, might accelerate the process.
90% of very promising therapies that have already gone through the in vivo testing stage don't make it out of Phase 1 studies. Let's not forget that some of the COVID vaccines that were initially given temporary approval were later taken off the market
Here is the published abstract by the authors (research principal investigators):
applegrove
(133,038 posts)here describe a disease they were helpless to fight against in their families. I'll leave it up for the sake of hope.
Akakoji
(563 posts)Based on broader criteria. There is a chance for a cure for everything. And a chance to use ablation or dissection as that cure if identified early enough. That site is rife with absolutely scandalous bs about hope. Unless you actually know someone whose breast cancer has been cured by wasp venom.
applegrove
(133,038 posts)Response to applegrove (Reply #27)
Post removed
applegrove
(133,038 posts)to share. I am not affiliated with any businesses. I am not trying to sell anything.
GaYellowDawg
(5,112 posts)And I think that false hope is a terrible thing. I also think it's important to realize that this type of therapy is pretty much in its infancy, so I'm pretty impressed with the numbers. If I had pancreatic cancer, I'd enroll in this clinical trial in a heartbeat and hope that I wasn't part of the control group. I agree that expectations must be tempered. As far as the "bespoke" aspect of this medication goes, I think we'll see the same sort of progress in the technology as we've seen in genome sequencing. Assaying for specific antigens and producing custom mRNA will become much closer to routine. I foresee a day - perhaps not in my lifetime, but in the next generation's - where a cancer diagnosis will lead to doctors taking a sample of the tumor and having an individualized treatment in days.
Cancer has taken the lives of a lot of my family, and it's taken some amazing friends of mine. I'm thrilled to see even baby steps towards its defeat. I really wish that similar progress into dementia was happening. My father died of cancer, and my mom of dementia. Both of them suffered greatly in different ways.
Akakoji
(563 posts)The production of artificial mRNA is crucial. The assays won’t be the hold up. The well off Western world takes the availability and distribution of vaccinations with decades old adjuvants for granted. Even many in the US can’t afford them. HPV vaccinations, for example, should be available for free to any resident of the US.
flamingdem
(40,978 posts)Pity the anti-vaxxers.
DFW
(60,425 posts)It’s one of those ugly cancers that never manifests itself until it's too late. I could have it now, and not even know it for a year or more. If I were to get the diagnosis, I’d drop everything, fly over there, and volunteer to be in their test program tomorrow.
livetohike
(24,411 posts)brothers. We are enrolled in a Johns Hopkins pancreatic cancer study. Dad passed in 2004 right after Election Day. From diagnosis to his death was three weeks.
This is such promising news, but I hope you never need the vaccine 
.
DFW
(60,425 posts)But he was too far gone. They tried to operate, but the tumor had wrapped itself around an artery, and it was too late.
As it is, he lasted 11 months after his diagnosis, which his doctors considered a near miracle. He was diagnosed in January. He got to see his last child married, and, six weeks before he died, his 50th wedding anniversary, for which my wife and I flew over to Washington. In late November, my mom called me and said that if I wanted a last visit, I had better get back to Washington fast. I did, and by the time I left back for Germany, he was gone. His farewell article, which his newspaper published just before he passed, was a monument to his career as a journalist. I still have it.
