Tumors Vanish After One Year of Treatment! The First Advanced Gastric Cancer Patient to Receive the New Cancer Vaccine Achieves Lasting Remission
**Tumors Vanish After One Year of Treatment! The First Advanced #GastricCancer Patient to Receive the New #Cancer Vaccine Achieves Lasting Remission**
Cancer Vaccine
Mrs. Liu, who was battling advanced gastric cancer, never imagined that one year ago, she was on the brink of death due to chemotherapy, with her disease progressing rapidly and cancer spreading throughout her body… Later, she won the “lottery” of her life. She received one of the world’s most advanced immunotherapies—cancer vaccines—in Fujian. One year later, all her cancer lesions have completely disappeared! Her successful case was even published in a prominent international journal, a Nature sub-journal, causing a huge sensation.
**First Advanced Gastric Cancer Patient to Receive the New Cancer Vaccine Achieves Lasting Remission! Tumors Vanish After One Year of Treatment**
In July 2017, 66-year-old Mrs. Liu was unfortunately diagnosed with stage IV gastric cancer. After surgery, she underwent FOLFOX chemotherapy to eliminate residual cancer cells, and everything seemed to be going well. Unfortunately, just eight months later, Mrs. Liu’s cancer recurred, and multiple lesions were found not only in her stomach but also in her peritoneum and lymph nodes, indicating that the cancer had rapidly spread throughout her body. Mrs. Liu had to undergo chemotherapy again. However, this time, her body could no longer withstand the side effects. After two cycles of Nab-paclitaxel, she was on the brink of death due to severe side effects and had to stop chemotherapy.
When she and her family were in despair, the doctors brought them good news. A nationally renowned cancer center was conducting a clinical trial of a cancer vaccine. Remarkably, this new type of cancer vaccine was a hot topic of research worldwide and had achieved significant breakthroughs.
The new cancer vaccine is a personalized, neoantigen-loaded monocyte-derived dendritic cell vaccine, known as Neo-MoDC. This vaccine fully mobilizes the immune system: dendritic cells (DCs) recognize cancer antigens, present antigens to activate T cells, promote T cell enrichment, and mobilize T cells to eliminate cancer cells, ultimately launching a series of precise and powerful attacks on cancer cells throughout the body.
Mrs. Liu decided to participate in the clinical trial of this new therapy.
This new therapy is actually much more complex than described above. Doctors first performed whole-exome sequencing on her tumor tissue samples, identifying 1,096 somatic non-synonymous mutations. They then determined her HLA (human leukocyte antigen) types as HLA-A02:07, HLA-A24:02, HLA-B40:01, HLA-B46:01, HLA-C01:02, and HLA-C03:04. Based on the binding affinity of these predicted mutant peptides with the patient’s HLA I class alleles, eight soluble mutant epitopes with the highest affinity were identified to prepare a personalized neoantigen dendritic cell cancer vaccine specifically targeting her cancer cells.
Mrs. Liu successfully received two months of subcutaneous Neo-MoDC vaccine injections to activate the T cell anti-tumor immune response. Researchers confirmed that the Neo-MoDC vaccine successfully induced a neoantigen-specific T cell response. For better therapeutic results, from day 65, Mrs. Liu received nivolumab (PD-1) treatment every 14 days.
An unexpected surprise occurred.
Five days later, Mrs. Liu’s CA-125 level rapidly dropped from 596 to 64 U/ml;
Two weeks later, malignant ascites disappeared, and clinical imaging showed a 30% reduction in the volume of metastatic supraclavicular lymph nodes;
Two months later, all metastatic lymph nodes reduced to less than 1 cm, and evaluations showed complete remission (CR) in the lymph nodes, with a 20% reduction in the longest diameter of ovarian metastatic lesions.
On the 231st day after the initial vaccination, imaging showed complete regression of all lesions;
On the 389th day of combined treatment, a CT scan showed that the ovarian metastatic lesions had also completely disappeared;
Subsequent CT scans confirmed that by the time of the paper’s publication (October 2021), complete regression had lasted for over 25 months.
This result indicates that the neoantigen vaccine Neo-MoDC and PD-1 in combination therapy may enhance each other’s efficacy, achieving better treatment outcomes, and providing a new immunotherapy combination for metastatic gastric cancer and other tumor types.
Mrs. Liu said that after the failure of chemotherapy, she was in despair, counting down the days of her life. She couldn’t imagine that she would have the opportunity to receive such cutting-edge therapy in China, let alone believe that she would become the fortunate one in this milestone research, successfully defeating cancer and returning to normal life!
In June 2022, this study was published in a prominent international journal, a Nature sub-journal, marking the first known case of complete and lasting tumor regression in gastric cancer through neoantigen-based DC vaccine and PD-1 therapy, which is of milestone significance!
**Cancer Vaccines Will Ultimately Become a Sword Against Cancer!**
Throughout the long history of humanity, various vaccines have been developed to combat devastating diseases, leading to the eradication of deadly diseases like smallpox and poliomyelitis. Similarly, the medical community is actively developing various vaccines to fight cancer, hoping to awaken our immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells upon injection, and to generate immune memory responses that protect us continuously, attacking any emerging cancer cells before they form tumors. This vision will eventually become a reality!
Immunotherapy is hailed as the hope for conquering cancer. Whether it’s the currently approved PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy for various cancers, adoptive cell immunotherapy represented by CAR-T, or numerous cancer vaccines under development, they represent just the tip of the iceberg in immunology. Researchers are uncovering more information from this iceberg, learning how to control immune responses, and using these therapeutic approaches in clinical practice to benefit patients, giving us increasing hope for survival. The hope for conquering cancer may lie within these advances. We look forward to more breakthroughs in immunotherapy, bringing more miracles to cancer patients.
