Personalised cancer vaccines at commodity cost through fully automated manufacturing
Vaccines tailored to each patient's tumour mutations are showing real benefit but cost a fortune to make. Automate the whole process so a personalised vaccine costs about as much as a course of chemotherapy.
Individualised neoantigen mRNA vaccines have shown reduced recurrence in melanoma with pembrolizumab (phase 2b, with phase 3 ongoing) and immune responses in pancreatic cancer, but require bespoke sequencing, epitope selection and GMP manufacture per patient at very high cost. The proposal is an engineering programme for end-to-end automation: standardised sample-to-sequence pipelines, validated epitope prediction, continuous-flow mRNA synthesis and formulation in closed robotic units sited regionally, and regulatory acceptance of platform-based release testing, targeting a manufactured cost under a few thousand dollars and turnaround under three weeks.
- Prices and value · New cancer drugs routinely cost over $150,000 a year, often for months of benefit. Systems cannot afford them and patients go bankrupt.
- No one can predict who responds to immunotherapy · Checkpoint drugs cure some patients and do nothing for most. We still cannot tell the two apart before treating.
- Dormant cells and minimal residual disease · After a 'successful' treatment, cells can sleep for years then relapse. We can barely detect them and cannot target them.
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not linked directly; found by shared links- IdeaPersonalised vaccines given only when the blood test turns positive
Shares BioNTech, Autogene cevumeran, Moderna, Intismeran autogene.
- Key paperRojas 2023: a personalised mRNA vaccine trained T cells against each patient's pancreatic cancer, and those who responded stayed cancer-free longer
Shares BioNTech, Autogene cevumeran, Intismeran autogene, Neoantigen.
- InstitutionUniversity Cancer Center Mainz (UCT Mainz) / Universitätsmedizin Mainz
Shares BioNTech, Autogene cevumeran, Neoantigen, Personalised neoantigen (mRNA) vaccines.
- IdeaVaccines aimed only at mutations shared by every tumour cell
Shares BioNTech, Moderna, Neoantigen, Personalised neoantigen (mRNA) vaccines.
- PairingPersonalised neoantigen vaccine + PD-1 blockade
Shares Autogene cevumeran, Intismeran autogene, Personalised neoantigen (mRNA) vaccines, Melanoma.
- IdeaWhat makes a neoantigen actually immunogenic?
Shares Autogene cevumeran, Intismeran autogene, Neoantigen, Personalised neoantigen (mRNA) vaccines.
- Key paperKEYNOTE-942: a personalised mRNA cancer vaccine plus pembrolizumab after melanoma surgery
Shares Moderna, Intismeran autogene, Neoantigen, Personalised neoantigen (mRNA) vaccines.
- TechnologySelf-amplifying and circular RNA therapeutics
Shares BioNTech, Moderna, Personalised neoantigen (mRNA) vaccines.