The first UK patients received the experimental mRNA therapy, a type of immunotherapy treatment called mRNA-4359, at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust as part of a phase 1/2 clinical trial.

 

The trial aims to evaluate its safety and potential for treating melanoma, lung cancer and other ‘solid tumour’ cancers.

 

The treatment is designed using messenger RNA (mRNA) and works by presenting common markers of tumours to the patient’s immune system. This should help to train patients’ immune systems to recognise and fight cancer cells expressing these markers, but also potentially eliminate cells that may suppress the immune response.

 

Cancer vaccines have the potential to make conventional immunotherapy more effective, and a number of cancer vaccines are entering clinical trials across the globe. These fall into one of two categories: personalised cancer immunotherapies, which rely on extracting a patient’s own genetic material from their tumours; and therapeutic cancer immunotherapies, like mRNA-4359, which are ‘ready-made’ and tailored to a particular type of cancer.

 

The Mobilize trial is run in partnership between Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, with the first patients in the UK receiving the treatment at the NIHR Imperial Clinical Research Facility at Hammersmith Hospital.

 

At this stage, the primary aim of the study is to assess if this new mRNA therapy is safe and tolerated by patients, either when it’s administered alone or in combination with an existing cancer drug called pembrolizumab – which is a type of immune checkpoint inhibitor. But researchers are also investigating whether the combination of treatments can actively shrink tumours in patients with certain types of lung and skin cancer.

 

Researchers say that while the experimental therapy is still in the early stages of testing, they hope it may ultimately lead to a new treatment option for difficult to treat cancers, should the approach be proven to be safe and effective.