Sheffield bowel cancer patients to trial personalised ‘vaccines’

Patients undergoing bowel cancer treatment at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will be invited to try out personalised ‘vaccines’ as part of a groundbreaking NHS ‘matchmaking’ service.

The Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad aims to recruit thousands of patients across England into various trials of a new type of immunotherapy treatment, known colloquially as cancer vaccines.

The personalised immunotherapy treatment will be created from specific mutations found in a patient’s DNA. Unlike conventional vaccines, they will be created once patients have been diagnosed with cancer, with the aim of preventing the cancer from returning. This will be achieved by analysing biological features of a patient’s tumour.

The vaccines will then create an immune ‘memory’ to recognise and eliminate cancer cells to prevent the cancer from returning after surgery or chemotherapy.

To begin with, only a handful of suitable patients from Sheffield will be invited to join the initial colorectal cancer vaccine trial, which is being run at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester and numerous other sites across the country. However, as the programme expands, more cancer vaccine trials are set to open.

Picture: The Cancer Clinical Trials Centre team at Weston Park.

See the full report on page 24 of the November 2024 issue of RAD Magazine.