ME:: tl;dr-ing if your pancreatic cancer is operable, a custom mRNA vaccine using the tumor cells removed during your operation appears to work in a small 16 person trial AND there is also an off-the-shelf vaccine that targets a protein called KRAS ; Kaitlin Sullivan, Marina Kopf, Anne Thompson:: Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial
Discovered: Apr 19, 2026 14:33 (UTC) ME:: tl;dr-ing if your pancreatic cancer is operable, a custom mRNA vaccine using the tumor cells removed during your operation appears to work in a small 16 person trial AND there is also an off-the-shelf vaccine that targets a protein called KRAS ; Kaitlin Sullivan, Marina Kopf, Anne Thompson:: Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial
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- Read the whole thing: Kaitlin Sullivan, Marina Kopf, Anne Thompson:: Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial
She and her husband, Ed, were on the next flight home. Nine days later, Gustafson had surgery to remove the Stage 2 cancer from her pancreas. The day before she was supposed to start chemotherapy, her doctors told her about a clinical trial exploring the use of personalized messenger RNA vaccines for cancer. It was February 2020 — months before mRNA vaccines for Covid would become one of the world’s hottest commodities. Very soon after, Gustafson was the first person to get one for pancreatic cancer.
Less than 13% of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer live for more than five years, making it one of the deadliest cancers. There is no routine screening for pancreatic cancer, such as colonoscopy or mammogram, and symptoms typically don’t show up until the disease is advanced. Once detected, there are few options for treatment. Only about 20% of cases are operable, which is currently required for someone to be eligible to join a pancreatic cancer vaccine trial.
Patients still have surgery to remove tumors. After that, the mRNA vaccines are personalized for each individual using genetic material taken from their unique tumor cells. In the clinical trial, after getting the vaccine, the patients also received chemotherapy, which is standard post-op treatment for operable pancreatic cancer.
Still, both Freed-Pastor and Vonderheide agreed that early results that show at least some people with pancreatic cancer can respond to immunotherapies is an important step forward in the field. Another team is working on an off-the-shelf vaccine that targets a protein called KRAS that is present in as many as 90% of pancreatic cancers. In a small, early trial, about 85% of the participants mounted an immune response to the protein.