Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive and lethal forms of cancer, with one of the poorest five-year survival rates for any cancer—only about 10%. A late diagnosis of this type of malignancy and its poor response to standard therapies, as well as rapid disease progression, place it in a special position regarding management. However, fresh developments in vaccine development as well as cancer immunotherapy bring new hope for a change in pancreatic cancer outcomes.
How Pancreatic Cancer Vaccines Work
Although traditional vaccines are aimed at preventing infectious diseases, cancer vaccines treat or prevent cancer by stimulating the patient’s immune system to recognize and self-attack cancer cells. The vast majority of pancreatic cancer vaccines aim at specific proteins or antigens expressed by pancreatic tumor cells. This is based on the rationale that the antigens will be presented to the immune system to teach the body to recognize these types of cancerous cells as invaders to attack.
These vaccines could be therapeutic or prophylactic, intended to prevent cancer in people at high risk. Thereby, the role of therapeutic vaccines in the treatment of pancreatic cancer has much promise, especially when combined with other modalities that are showing improved effects of therapy as a whole—be it surgery, chemotherapy, or checkpoint inhibitors.
Recent Developments and Research
Recent research into pancreatic cancer vaccines has yielded very promising results. These may include individually tailored vaccines based on the genetic profile of a patient’s tumor. The vaccines hit neoantigens—the mutations unique to the tumor—therefore, the immune system will be able to selectively attack cancer cells without touching normal cells. First trials of such kinds of individually tailored vaccines report promising results in terms of extended survival and even complete remission in some cases.
Another very fast-developing area is the inclusion of vaccines in other forms of immunotherapy. These include checkpoint inhibitors, which prevent the activity of proteins that act to stop the immune system from fighting against cancer cells. These inhibitors were not very successful as single agents in the treatment of pancreatic cancer but may show greatly improved results when administered with a vaccine that primes the immune system.
Challenges and Future Directions
However, despite all these developments, some formidable challenges remain to be overcome before pancreatic cancer vaccines become part of standard treatment. One major issue is that pancreatic tumors are immunosuppressive; thus, they create an environment in which the immune system has difficulty mounting an attack on the cancer.
Research is underway to find ways around this obstacle by investigating options such as combining vaccines with agents that modulate the tumor microenvironment.
However, the identification of appropriate antigens and methods of administration of the vaccines are steps that are yet to be optimized. Pancreatic cancer vaccines have a promising future only when personalized approaches are applied, in which treatments are tailored to the individual characteristics of the cancer in each patient.
Research and development of vaccines against pancreatic cancer present new frontiers of hope against one of the deadliest cancers. Much-needed improvements in survival rates and a respective reinstatement of hope in patients lie ahead, with challenges remaining for these vaccines. Research in this area is, therefore, foreseeable to further increase the place pancreatic cancer vaccines can take in preventing and treating this most horrific disease, offering a much brighter future to those affected by it.
Arnold