A vaccine to prevent pancreatic cancer is being tested in southwest Ohio.
The University of Cincinnati says they are enrolling patients in a Phase 2 clinical trial for a vaccine that builds on the same mRNA technology that was used to develop vaccines for COVID-19.
The trial at UC is the first in the Midwest for this particular vaccine, which University officials call a new frontier in cancer treatment.
They hope to enroll 260 patients globally, with as many patients as possible in Cincinnati.
More than 66,000 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year. It ranks as the third leading cause of cancer death in women and fourth leading cause of cancer death in men.
“They took the COVID virus and sequenced it and then made a vaccine against its RNA sequence, and here they do the same thing,” Dr. Davendra Sohal, site principal investigator, said in a press release. “After surgery to remove the tumor, a piece of it is taken and sent to the lab. They sequence the tumor, make a highly personalized vaccine to target each person’s cancer specifically, and send it back to us.”
For more information on the trial, email cancer@uchealth.com.
