A team at Memorial Sloan Kettering has made significant progress in developing an mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer, a disease notoriously difficult to treat. About 90% of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer do not survive.
In a small trial three years ago, the team tested the vaccine’s safety on 16 patients. The results were promising: Half of the participants showed an immune response, and none of them had their cancer relapse after 18 months. Recently, the team released a new study in Nature, which found that six out of eight patients who responded to the vaccine did not have their cancer return more than three years later.
Study author and surgeon Dr. Vinod Balachandran joins host Flora Lichtman to discuss the results and what they could mean for the future of cancer treatment.
Source: https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/pancreatic-cancer-vaccine