A new cancer vaccine for advanced liver cancer, developed by Geneos Therapeutics, is now reportedly proven to shrink liver tumors in nearly a third of patients after a small trial.

The new development comes after the patients receive a personalized vaccine and an immunotherapy drug. 

Geneos Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotherapeutics firm focused on developing personalized therapeutic cancer vaccines (PTCVs), published the results of its GT-30 clinical study under the paper "Personalized Neoantigen Vaccine and Pembrolizumab in Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A phase 1/2 trial," showing the vaccine's good safety, immunogenicity, and effectiveness results from the whole cohort of patients who participated in the trial.

(Photo: VICTORIA SARNO JORDAN/AFP via Getty Images) Nurses take a patient's glucose level and pulse at the Remote Area Medical (RAM) mobile clinic on October 7, 2017, at the Riverview School in Grundy, Virginia. 

The preliminary findings, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research in San Diego and published in Nature Medicine, suggest that vaccines based on mutations found only in a patient's tumor may improve the immune system's ability to recognize and attack difficult-to-treat cancers.

The findings, which must be verified in a bigger experiment, bring the industry one step closer to successful cancer vaccines after many previous failures. They may also broaden the sorts of malignancies that such medicines may target.

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Liver-Shrinking Vaccine

The study included 36 individuals with hepatocellular carcinoma, which is the most frequent kind of liver cancer. Patients were given custom-made vaccinations in addition to Merck's widely used immunotherapy, Keytruda, which was the standard of care at the time.

Nearly a third of the patients treated with the combination therapy (30.1%) saw tumor shrinking, with three of those individuals achieving a complete response, which means no visible tumor indications remained after a median follow-up of 21.5 months.

Moderna, Merck & Co., and others have had encouraging successes combining personalized vaccinations with immunotherapy to prevent skin cancer from returning in patients after surgery. 

AI-Powered Cancer Detection

On a related note, early detection of cancer, including liver cancer, proves to be moving forward as scientists at Sweden's University of Gothenburg have created an AI-powered approach for detecting early-stage cancers.

The new test is expected to revolutionize cancer prognosis since it is non-invasive, has greater accuracy, and can detect a variety of tumors, including lung, liver, and skin cancer.

Previously, doctors relied on mass spectroscopy to detect molecular signals that may indicate cancer in a patient's body. However, in this study, researchers used an AI-driven technique to examine data, resulting in increased dependability.

The new cancer test is based on recognizing specific glycans, which are lengthy sugar chains connected to lipids and proteins that influence how our cells function.

These complex sugar molecules are one of the four primary macromolecules required for life: DNA, proteins, and lipids. Changes in glycome structures have been linked to inflammation, food allergies, illnesses like rheumatoid arthritis and cancer, and even natural processes like aging.

Numerous publications have found higher levels of N-glycan structures in breast cancer patients, although they are missing in healthy tissues. Furthermore, a glycan-based blood test to identify ovarian cancer is now in early human studies.

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