Top 5 Cancer Vaccine Stories from 2024

Here are the top 5 cancer vaccine stories CURE® has covered during 2024.

This has been a year of tremendous promise for cancer vaccine research. With breakthroughs spanning a wide range of cancers, from pancreatic cancer to melanoma, vaccines are moving ever closer to becoming a key component of cancer treatment.

Throughout the year, CURE® has extensively covered the topic of cancer vaccines, from breaking news to in-depth reporting. Here are some highlights of our cancer vaccine coverage from 2024.

Cancer Vaccine ‘Closer Than We Ever Thought,’ 2025 Availability Possible

Personalized cancer vaccines could be available for some patient populations as soon as next year, one expert said in an interview with CURE®.

“We are way closer than we ever thought [we would be] just like three years ago,” said Dr. Patrick Ott, director of the Center for Personal Vaccines, clinical director of the Melanoma Disease Center and director of clinical sciences of the Center for Immuno-Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, as well as an attending physician in the department of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and a member of the scientific advisory board of drug development company Imunon.

The enthusiasm followed the phase 2b KEYNOTE-942/mRNA-4157-P201 study, which found that patients with advanced-stage melanoma experienced reduced risk of recurrence or death following treatment with a combination of mRNA vaccine mRNA-4157 (V940) and Keytruda (pembrolizumab).

The combination reduced the risk of recurrence or death by 49% and the risk of distant metastasis or death by 62% when compared with treatment with Keytruda alone in patients with stage 3 or 4 melanoma with a high risk of recurrence following complete resection.

Pancreatic Cancer Vaccine Offers ‘New Twist’ on Vaccination Technology

ELI-002 7P is an off-the-shelf vaccine being developed to treat resected pancreatic cancer and offers a “new twist on an older vaccine technology,” Dr. Suresh Nair told CURE®.

Nair is the physician-in-chief at the Lehigh Valley Topper Cancer Institute in Pennsylvania.

“I've been a medical oncologist in the community setting for 35 years with a strong focus on immunotherapy treatment and research and I feel as excited about this trial as I did [when] we were part of the first phase 2 testing of [Opdivo (nivolumab)] in melanoma back in 2013,” Nair said.

Cancer Vaccine Could Go ‘Above and Beyond Standard of Care’ For Patients

“Current vaccines have a dismal record, and minimal evidence of efficacy,” said Dr. Jeffrey S. Weber, who was the deputy director of the NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center and Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Professor of Oncology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, via email in a January 2024 interview.

Weber, who died in August, was among the researchers on the KEYNOTE-942 study.

“This mRNA vaccine would be the first approved cancer vaccine with clear-cut evidence of efficacy in a well-done phase 3 trial [which was recently initiated],” Weber said of mRNA-4157.

Cancer Vaccine Likely ‘Several Years’ Away From Wide Availability

While ELI-002, a vaccine for the postsurgical treatment of KRAS-mutated pancreatic and colorectal cancers, is showing promising early study results, any potential broad commercial availability of the drug is likely far off, as one researcher told CURE®.

“We're certainly trying to advance as quickly as possible, but it'll be several years most likely before this drug is broadly available,” said Dr. Christopher Haqq, chief medical officer and vice president, head of research and development for biotechnology company Elicio Therapeutics, Inc., in an interview with CURE®.

Haqq was among the investigators of a phase 1 clinical trial studying ELI-002, the results of which were published in Nature Medicine showing that mKRAS-specific T cell responses and tumor biomarker responses were observed in 84% of patients, while biomarker clearance was observed in 24% of patients, and the median relapse-free survival was 16.33 months, with no dose-limiting toxicities observed.

Cancer Vaccines Are a 'Marvel'

For the summer seasonal issue of CURE®, we put a spotlight on advancements in cancer vaccines, speaking with both patients who have been treated with vaccines and researchers working in the field.

Among those patients was teacher Gary Keblish, who has lived without recurrence of melanoma for four years since receiving six post-surgical doses of the vaccine-Keytruda combination as part of the KEYNOTE-942 clinical trial.

“I think it’s a marvel,” Keblish says of the treatment. “And I would encourage anyone who has the opportunity [to participate in a clinical trial] to do it. As a layperson, in terms of making the decision to do it, my choices were to do nothing further about the cancer that was removed from my body, or to enter a regular treatment plan, a known, established treatment plan, or put my name in the hat, and hope that I can be included in a clinical trial. And it was wonderful to have that choice.”

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