First vaccine against lung cancer to be tested in Spain

Cancer vaccines are no longer science fiction. The current moment will go down in medical history as the beginning of a new era in the fight against this disease. And yesThe first Phase 1 (human) clinical trial to test the BNT116 vaccine against the most common and deadly lung cancer: non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has just begun. The vaccine developed BioNTekuses technology Messenger RNA (mRNA)– similar to coronavirus vaccines – and works by presenting NSCLC tumor markers to the immune system to prepare the body to destroy cancer cells expressing these markers.

NMSC is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, killing nearly 1.8 million people each year. In Spain, its mortality rate has increased by 16% over the past five years. One person dies from this cause every 20 minutes.. Lung cancer develops due to abnormal growth of cells in the form of a tumor that settles in the lungs, which are the organs responsible for delivering oxygen to the blood and removing carbon dioxide from the body. NMSC, against which a vaccine has been created, is the most common. Currently, only 30% of cases are detected in the early stages, when Early diagnosis and treatment means survival rates increase to 80%.

That’s why our country among the seven countries in which the project was launched (along with the UK, the US, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Turkey), which will be developed in 34 research centers with 130 patients (from those in the early stages, before surgery or radiation therapy, to those in the late stages of the disease or with frequent relapses) that They will receive the vaccine along with immunotherapy.

The Spanish centres that will take part will be Virgen de la Macarena Hospital (Seville), Jimenez Diaz Foundation (Madrid), La Fe University and Polytechnic Hospital (Valencia), Vall d’Hebron and Geman Trias i Pujol Hospital in Barcelona, ​​and the University Hospital Complex of Santiago de Compostela.

He The first patient to receive it was a 67-year-old Londoner (Janusz Racz). artificial intelligence scientist who was diagnosed with the disease in May and began chemotherapy and radiation treatments shortly after. Raz received the six consecutive injections at five-minute intervals for 30 minutes. at the National Institute for Health Research’s (UCLH) Clinical Research Centre. Each dose contained a different strand of RNA. The process will be repeated weekly for six weeks straight, and then every three weeks for 54 weeks.

The goal of the treatment is to boost a person’s immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells intact, unlike chemotherapy.

“We are now entering an exciting new era of clinical trials of mRNA-based immunotherapy to study the treatment of lung cancer,” said Guardian Professor Siou Ming Lee, consultant medical oncologist at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) NHS Foundation Trust, who is leading the UK trial. “It’s easy to use and you can target specific antigens on the cancer cell and then attack them. “This technology is the next big step in cancer treatment.”– he emphasized.

If the results of the first phase of trials are positive, scientists hope to move on to phases 2 and 3, and once completed, the vaccine will become the standard of treatment for this type of tumor worldwide, “and save many lung cancer patients,” Lee said hopefully.