Pancreatic cancer: Vaccine trial shows promising results

Pancreatic cancer: Trial shows lasting results

An early trial for a bespoke mRNA pancreatic cancer vaccine is showing lasting results, giving researchers and patients new hope. FOX 10's Nicole Krasean reports.

PHOENIX - There is some promising news for pancreatic cancer research, as medical data show lasting results from an mRNA vaccine in an early trial.

"mRNA vaccines for cancer show a lot of promise," said Dr. Anna Berkenblit, Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) chief scientific and medical officer.

Big picture view:

Dr. Barkenblit explained how the trial worked: it uses an mRNA vaccine administered to patients whose cancer was caught early enough for them to undergo surgery, and then pair the vaccine with immunotherapy.

"The vaccine was a bespoke vaccine, so it was made from the patient’s own tumor and then given back to the patient. We know seven out of eight patients in the trial who responded to the vaccine plus the immunotherapy are still alive six years after surgery," Dr. Berkenblit said.

Why you should care:

According to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, nearly 200 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer every day in 2026, and only about 13% of them will make it five years. That makes any promising data a big deal in the fight against this extremely deadly disease.

Survivor Weighs In:

Robert Panacci will become a six-year survivor in June.

"I got very lucky, was able to get in there early. Surgery was deemed successful, my surgeon was very happy with what he saw," said Panacci, a pancreatic cancer survivor and PanCAN Phoenix affiliate chair.

Panacci says he wants to give others hope, but also wants to emphasize the time and money involved in these trials.

"Let’s make sure we keep the focus and attention on getting the funding that these companies are finding difficult to get to pull out the real solutions and get them to the patients as fast as possible," Panacci said.

What's next:

Dr. Berkenblit says more data is needed from an efficacy and safety perspective, but she says a Phase 2 clinical trial is already in the works.

"This is a larger, randomized study and so hopefully that will show that this benefit is present in a larger population," Dr. Berkenblit said.