Name: First ‘personalised’ melanoma skin cancer vaccine trial under way in UK | BBC News
Uploaded: 2024-09-03T04:58:17.000Z
Duration: 6 min 12 s
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We start this hour with what experts are calling a potential game changer in the treatment of skin cancer.

The world's first personalized vaccine for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, has begun being tested in Britain.

Some other countries, including Australia, are also trying it out on patients. The treatment, which uses the same mRNA technology as some Covid jabs, works by telling the body to hunt down cancer cells and prevent them from coming back.

Researchers say the jab also has the potential to stop lung, bladder, and kidney cancers. With more details, here's our health correspondent, Sophie Hutchinson. Steve Young, one of the first NHS patients to take part in the trial for what's hoped will be a game-changing treatment.

It's for melanoma, the deadliest of all the skin cancers, and it aims to help those at the highest risk of a recurrence.

Steve was given the experimental treatment at University College Hospital in London.

He had a melanoma removed from his scalp last summer.

He told us the trial is his best chance of keeping cancer-free. "I feel okay, someone told me I've got survivor's syndrome because I actually feel guilty.

I feel guilty that I'm completely fine and yet I'm getting all this attention.

And I'm, you know, I get to have a scan and an MRI every three months when I know that people are waiting such a long time.

And I genuinely feel kind of awful about that.

But I just really hope that what's happening with the trial and the results they get are going to be good news and it's going to go on to do amazing things." The personalized treatment works by identifying proteins unique to each person's cancer, and then uses the same technology which created some Covid vaccines called mRNA to prime the immune system to attack the cells.

It's being used in combination with another cancer drug, and previous results suggest together it almost halved the risk of recurrence or death after three years. "It's a very specific treatment, highly personalized to each individual's tumor.

And it's a really exciting way of hopefully turning the patient's own immune system against their cancer.

And it looks like it could be a really effective therapeutic approach.

This trial will really prove that's the case or not." This is an international trial.

UK doctors are hoping to recruit at least 70 patients across centers including London, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Leeds. Sophie Hutchinson, BBC News. Well, let's find out more about the vaccine from Professor Paul Lorigan, who is overseeing the trial at the Christie Hospital in Manchester. Thank you very much for joining us on BBC News, Professor.

Just explain how the vaccine actually works and how it is individual to the person. "So it's very exciting.

We know the vaccines have really transformed how we treat infectious diseases, save millions of lives and improve the quality of many others.

And now it's been turned towards the treatment of cancer.

And it is, as you say, a personalized vaccine.

So patients with melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, will have the melanoma removed.

If they are at significant risk of recurrence, then the melanoma that's been removed is analyzed.

The genetic material is broken down, and we can identify the targets in the melanoma cells that are particular to the melanoma cells and not to the normal cells because the cancer cells, of course, come from ourselves.

And then having identified those, there's a very clever algorithm which predicts which ones are most likely to stimulate the immune system or the immune system is going to react to those.

And so it is then turned into a signal, an mRNA signal, which is injected intramuscularly in the same way as you would have your flu vaccine or your Covid vaccine." "So is it a single jab or more than one?" "So in this trial, it's given every time we give another drug, immunotherapy treatment for the treatment of melanoma.

What we need to work out with these is about, you know, how best to give them the frequency, how long to give for etc.

But for this, it's given throughout the period of a year when the patients are on treatment." "And who is getting it now and how long will this trial last before it can go further?" "So the patients who are getting it now, there are 10 centers in the UK and there are patients who are at high risk who've had a melanoma removed, but we know because the features of the melanoma, they're at significant risk of the cancer coming back.

And those patients are hopefully eligible for the trial.

And I think we will get a signal very quickly or get an answer within a few years rather than months." "I was going to say, what is the global potential for this if it is successful?" "Well, in terms of for melanoma, there's huge potential.

But, you know, the real potential here is, of course, is expanding this into other cancers because it's not a technology that just works in one cancer.

If it works in melanoma, it could work across a number of different cancers, lung cancer, bowel cancer, kidney cancer, etc.

So there's a potential here for really transformative change in how we treat patients with cancer." "And how optimistic are you that that will happen?" "So I think you can probably sense there's a lot of excitement about this and it is based on how the technology works.

But also we have done a smaller study with 150 patients and there was a strong signal from that that is what works.

So, yes, we are optimistic." "Okay, Professor Paul Lorigan, I'm sure everyone who's watching has their fingers crossed that that will be successful.

Thank you very much for joining us on BBC News." "Thank you."