Research Improves Personalized Cancer Vaccine Candidates

Moffitt Cancer Center today announced researchers are working to improve the efficacy of neoantigen-targeted cancer vaccines by better understanding whether primary or metastatic tumors should be used to produce the personalized vaccine.

On November 5, 2023, these cancer specialists launched a study evaluating primary and metastatic tumor pairs from 45 patients with several solid tumor types, including melanoma, bladder, head and neck cancers, and non-small cell lung cancer.

Results presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer annual meeting show that melanoma, bladder, and head and neck tumors share a high percentage of mutations between primary and metastatic tumors.

However, other solid tumors, such as esophageal and non-small cell lung cancer, share less.

Whole exome sequencing was used to identify somatic alterations, which are genetic mutations or DNA alterations that may impact the type of antigens produced by the cancer cells that the vaccine can then target.

Dr. Ahmad Tarhini, Director, Cutaneous Clinical and Translational Research at Moffitt, commented in a press release, "Our analysis demonstrates genetic variations that exist when comparing paired primary and metastatic tumors that appear to vary by histology."

"Variants are potentially undergoing negative selection supported by the preferential loss of out-of-frame events in metastatic tumors."

Understanding the clonal structure will be vital to predicting neoantigens for effective neoantigen-based vaccines, where oncogenic drivers can be prioritized and used to determine the primary clones.

Tarhini and the Moffitt team continue this work, expanding their study to include paired tumor samples from 600 additional patients.

As Florida's only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center and one of only 30 leading cancer centers in the U.S. participating in the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, Moffitt is at the forefront of cancer centers worldwide.