Personalised vaccines used to prevent cancer coming back after surgery will be available on the NHS within five years, according to the national director of cancer.
Professor Peter Johnson described the last decade of cancer immunotherapy research as an “explosion of knowledge” that has allowed the creation of new medicines that harness the power of a patient’s immune system to attack tumours.
He told The Times Health Commission: “One of the enormous transformations in the treatment of established cancer in the last decade has been our recognition of the ways in which we can use the immune system to target cancers and to lock the body’s immune response onto the abnormalities in cancer cells that make them potentially visible to the immune system.
“We have started to see the first steps into producing vaccines which target the specific mutational patterns in people’s cancers.”
He added: “Recurrent cancer following operation remains a big issue even as we diagnose more cancers early, so we will see more people having operations to remove the primary tumour but who remain at risk of recurrence. And the opportunity to use vaccination to reduce the risk of recurrence in that group of people is very attractive.”
In January, the government signed a long-term partnership agreement with the German-based biotechnology company BioNTech — which previously developed a Covid-19 vaccine with Pfizer— to provide up to 10,000 patients with precision cancer immunotherapies by 2030.
The UK-based clinical trials are intended to help treat patients through the use of personalised mRNA cancer vaccines and immunotherapies.
Vaccines made of mRNA can be designed to specifically target a particular cancer’s unique genetic sequences or mutations. This helps the body selectively destroy cancer cells while sparing healthy cells — potentially resulting in fewer side effects compared to chemotherapy.
Cancer immunotherapies being developed by BioNTech include those targeting advanced melanoma, prostate cancer, head, neck and other cancers.
Professor Johnson said that potentially more useful was the ability to identify cancer early in blood tests could give patients more treatment options
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Johnson said that chemotherapy is often used alongside initial cancer treatments such as surgery to kill any remaining cancer cells. This approach is common in patients who have had surgeries for breast cancer, lung cancer, and bladder cancer, where there is a high risk of recurrence.
“If we could switch to using vaccine approaches, together with or instead of chemotherapy, that would be enormously attractive and potentially a very important step forward,” he said.
Johnson told the Commission that the use of vaccines to improve the body’s ability to spot and destroy tumours to prevent cancer in healthy patients is “still speculative”. He added that potentially more useful was the ability to identify cancer early via spotting tumour DNA in blood tests which would give patients more treatment options.
He said: “If we are able to pick up very early cancers, using technologies such as circulating DNA in the bloodstream, like the GRAIL test which we’re trialling at the moment. If that is successful for picking out very early cancers, that obviously opens up lots of opportunities for different types of intervention.”
In June, Johnson, who teaches oncology at the University of Southampton, was named as chairman of the government’s new “cancer mission” as part of its £650 million Life Sci for Growth package, unveiled by Jeremy Hunt to boost the life sciences sector.
According to Hunt, the investment is a significant step in harnessing UK innovation to help cut waiting lists, ensuring that the government will take forward Lord O’Shaughnessy’s recommendations to speed up the delivery of clinical trials.
The Times investigates the crisis facing the health and social care system in England. Find out more about The Times Health Commission
Sarah Carter is a health and wellness expert residing in the UK. With a background in healthcare, she offers evidence-based advice on fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being, promoting healthier living for readers.
