Vaccine: Biontech offers hope in the fight against pancreatic cancer

DMainz-based mRNA pioneer Biontech is attracting attention with new data about its personalized mRNA-based cancer vaccines, which could offer hope to patients with difficult-to-treat pancreatic cancer. Long-term results from a phase 1 study showed that Autogene’s cancer vaccine candidate Cevumeran, formerly known as BNT122, induced an immune response in eight of 16 patients with surgically removed pancreatic cancer that persisted for up to three years after treatment with specific T cells could be detected , directed against the tumor.

Longer survival times were also observed on average in these patients who responded to the vaccine: six of the eight patients remained tumor-free during this time, while overall, tumor recurrence is common in patients compliant with current standards of care. Only about 20 percent of patients who undergo surgery and subsequent maintenance chemotherapy survive the first five years after diagnosis. In the Biontech study, tumors also returned in seven of eight patients who did not respond to the vaccine.

“These new data are an early signal of the potential of our approach to a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine in this indication with an unmet medical need,” explained Biontech co-founder and chief medical officer Ozlem Türeci in a company press release on the occasion of the data presentation at a specialized conference in San Diego on Sunday. According to Türeci, the results show that the technology developed by Biontech can eliminate remaining tumor lesions in the early stages of the disease and thereby delay or prevent disease relapse.

How the Biotech approach works

Biontech’s approach to creating personalized mRNA cancer vaccines with BNT122 is based on helping the patient’s immune system recognize cancer. Here, individual tumor characteristics (called neoantigens) are identified using modern sequencing techniques and then encoded into the vaccine’s mRNA. Ideally, the body responds to the introduction of this mRNA by producing new T cells that are now directed against these tumor neoantigens and can therefore recognize them and fight them effectively.

The new data raises hope that this active principle may hold promise for treating pancreatic and other types of cancer and thus improve the effectiveness of existing treatments. Biontech is currently further exploring this phenomenon in three ongoing Phase 2 studies with its Genentech partner, a Swiss group company, Roche, for indications in pancreatic, skin and colon cancers. “We continue to advance our vision of personalized cancer medicine and want to help improve the standard of care for many patients,” Türeci says.

Failure at later stages is not uncommon.

The Phase 2 study tests the drug for the first time in a larger patient population to test not only safety, but also proper dosing and effectiveness. In general, during the development process, a drug goes through three clinical phases before it can be approved. Failure is not uncommon, even at later stages, as a cancer hope from the Darmstadt-based Merck Group recently demonstrated.

For Biontech, which is currently selling significantly less of its coronavirus vaccine Comirnaty, personalized mRNA cancer therapies are an important business for the future. In this regard, these new clinical data, although obtained at an early clinical stage, are a positive sign that the hopes that the Mainz company has placed in its technology platform may be justified. The capital market is also waiting for corresponding impulses.

By making a breakthrough in developing a vaccine in the fight against the corona pandemic, the biotech company has impressively demonstrated what its innovative strength is capable of. But she has yet to prove that she can replicate this in other therapeutic areas. Oncology was the original research focus of Biontech founders Türeci and Ugur Sahin before they quickly changed course during the pandemic to make important contributions to the fight against coronavirus with their technologies.