ENT cancer: a personalized French vaccine would help prevent recurrences

ENT cancers: significant risks of relapse

There are nearly 14,000 new ENT cancers per year with a predominantly male margin (3 out of 4 cases, mainly due to risk factors). Most of these ENT cancers (cancer of the tongue, throat and respiratory tract) are linked to the consumption of alcohol and tobacco. But as risk factors are decreasing in men and increasing in women, the number of cancers is increasing among women.

Faced with these cancers, the risks of relapse are high and “classic” immunotherapy has a limited impact. But a French company based in Strasbourg has been working for several years on a new strategy whose first clinical results have proven encouraging: personalized vaccines.

A personalized vaccine designed using artificial intelligence

The vaccine can only be used on people with head and neck cancer. Before administering it to patients, a first step is necessary: ​​removing a piece of the patient’s tumor during a surgical operation. This piece of tumor is then genetically sequenced by Japanese artificial intelligence whose mission is to identify the 30 mutations most at risk for the patient. A complex step when we know that there are 3000 mutations capable of giving an immune response.

The vaccine is then manufactured at the headquarters of Transgene in Strasbourg and it is personalized since it is based on the data obtained through the analysis of the tumor tip. Each patient therefore has their own vaccine. Once administered (in the form of 20 subcutaneous injections), the TG4050 vaccine will educate the immune system so that it develops antibodies capable of destroying cancer cells.

Promising first results

At the AACR 2024 (American Association for Cancer Research) congress in San Diego, the results of a phase 1 clinical study conducted on 33 patients were presented by Dr. Olivier Lantz, deputy director of the unit Immunity and cancer (U932 Institut Curie / Inserm). The main results are:

• After a median follow-up of 18.6 months, the 16 patients who received the vaccine are still in remission, while there were 3 relapses among the 16 patients in the observational arm. According to the Transgene press release, “for this category of patients with head and neck cancer, with current standard treatments, approximately 40% of patients are likely to relapse within 24 months following surgery associated with standard therapy ( chemoradiation)”.
• Specific CD4+ and CD8+ immune responses were detected in 16/17 patients who received the vaccine (16 patients in the treatment arm and one patient in the observational arm treated after relapse), according to particularly rigorous testing conditions.
• The vaccine induces durable immune responses against multiple targets in multiple patients. T lymphocyte responses were detected 211 days (7 months) after the start of treatment.

A phase II trial launched very soon

Dr Olivier Lantz, Head of the Clinical Immunology Laboratory at the Institut Curie, adds: “Immunological data generated by TG4050 shows a strong and specific cellular immune response, despite strict measurement criteria. The diversity, quality and persistence of these responses were, without doubt, a key factor in the prevention of relapses in patients treated with TG4050“.

For Professor Christophe Le Tourneau, head of the Early Clinical Trials Department at the Institut Curie and international co-coordinator of this clinical trial, “Our work demonstrates the potential of therapeutic vaccines, which could not only prevent relapses in head and neck cancers but also make the tumor more receptive to other forms of immunotherapies. We look forward to continuing the study of this vaccine“. Phase II of the clinical study will begin in the coming weeks.