A new immune vaccine has emerged that reduces the risk of recurrence of pancreatic and colorectal cancers and increases the possibility of long-term survival.
The U.S. biotechnology corporations Elicio Therapeutics and researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) reported on the 12th that they confirmed the effect of increased survival without recurrence in a phase 1 clinical trial of the cancer vaccine 'ELI-002 2P.' The research results were published in the international journal 'Nature Medicine' on the same day.
Pancreatic and colorectal cancers often recur even after surgery and the completion of chemotherapy with medication or radiation. It is due to a small number of cancer cells remaining and later growing. Patients with these cancers have many mutations in the gene that produces the KRAS protein. This mutation plays a crucial role in cancer growth.
In theory, targeting the KRAS gene mutation could treat cancer. For example, the method involves extracting a patient's immune cells, modifying them to seek out cells with the mutated protein, and then reinjecting them into the body. However, being patient-specific has made drug development time-consuming and costly.
Elicio Therapeutics has developed a KRAS mutation-based cancer vaccine that can be mass-produced in advance and supplied whenever needed. The principle is to deliver mutated KRAS protein fragments to lymph nodes to induce immune cells, specifically T cells, to generate the appropriate immune response. It's like having them prepare for an attack by knowing in advance who the enemy is.
The researchers conducted a phase 1 clinical trial involving 20 pancreatic cancer patients and 5 colorectal cancer patients, who still had faint traces of cancer cells in their blood after standard treatment. After an average follow-up of 20 months, T cells that strongly reacted to the KRAS mutation were generated in 68% of the patients. Patients with strong T cell responses lived longer and had longer periods without recurrence than other patients.
In particular, for pancreatic cancer patients, the average overall survival after vaccination was about 29 months, and the recurrence-free survival was more than 15 months—longer than past statistics. Some patients showed immune responses that recognized not only the mutations targeted by the vaccine but also other unique KRAS mutations of the patients, indicating that ELI-002 2P has the potential to respond to individual mutations.
The researchers noted, 'This vaccine strengthens the immune systems of pancreatic and colorectal cancer patients, helping them to attack cancer more effectively,' adding that 'the phase 2 clinical trial is currently ongoing.'
References
Nature Medicine (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03876-4