Australian doctor receives mRNA vaccine for brain cancer
An Australian doctor has become the first patient in the world to receive a personalised brain cancer vaccine in what is hoped to be the new frontier in treatment for the most deadly types of tumours.
Melanoma pathologist Richard Scolyer, who is a world leader in his field and co-director of the Melanoma Institute of Australia, has volunteered to receive the immunotherapy treatment ahead of surgery.
The development of the vaccine is based on Dr Scolyer and his colleagues’ work in melanoma treatment.
Dr Scolyer, 56, was diagnosed with Grade 4 glioblastoma – the most deadly type of brain cancer – in June.
Just five days after his first seizure heralded the beginning of Dr Scolyer’s symptoms, Professor Long began developing a novel treatment plan for her colleague.
“It is a simple concept – the immune system is better able to see the enemy, and be trained against it, and thus mop up any cancer cells that we cannot see,” Professor Long told the National Press Club.
“Immunotherapy is like sniffer dogs being trained through exposure to illicit drugs, so when they get to work, they know what they are searching for.
“And now, melanoma science is fuelling world-first breakthroughs in brain cancer, the impetus for which – Richard’s own diagnosis – no one could have predicted.”
Three weeks after his first seizure, Dr Scolyer was given a combination neoadjuvant immunotherapy before surgery.
After that, he had surgery to remove part of the tumour, followed by three more infusions of immunotherapy and six weeks of daily radiotherapy.
On September 20, he was injected with an experimental personalised brain cancer mRNA vaccine, developed by Moderna, and specific to his tumour’s DNA and RNA.
“I stand here today as the first brain cancer patient to have a personalised cancer vaccine with combination immunotherapy (in combination with Merk’s immunotherapy drug Keytruda), instead of standard treatment,” Dr Scolyer said.
“I may survive, and beat the unbeatable, and in doing so, we will massively impact the whole brain cancer field.”
Professor Long has now shared the results of Dr Scolyer’s neoadjuvant immunotherapy.
She said the early scientific results were “nothing short of phenomenal”.
Twelve days after receiving the combination therapy, there had been a 10-fold reduction in the immune cells within his brain tumour, evidence that immune cells were activated against an enemy, and immune cells had bound to the drug, proving that there was no “blood-brain barrier” preventing the drugs from reaching the tumour as previously conceptualised.
“We couldn’t have hoped for better results,” Professor Long said.