A clinical trial shows promise for a new colorectal cancer vaccine, as it caused no serious side effects while bloodwork demonstrated immune cell activation.

New research offers hope of an effective vaccine for colorectal cancer.

These results appear in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer and outline a phase 1 clinical trial.

The trial set out to establish if the vaccine itself was safe and whether it activated immune cells — both aspects of which were satisfactory. This success paves the way for further study.

A research team at Jefferson (Philadelphia University and Thomas Jefferson University) in the United States is the developer of the vaccine.

The group’s latest scientific work involved 10 individuals who had stage 1 or 2 colon cancer.

The team administered the vaccine to the participants who returned for bloodwork at 30, 90, and 180 days after the drug delivery.

The blood samples showed evidence of killer T cell activation, a process that causes the T cells to find and destroy colon cancer cells.

The Jefferson scientists were also interested in the potential side effects of the vaccine during this trial. While the participants had some discomfort at the injection point, they reported no serious side effects.

The vaccine works by mobilizing the immune system against a specific molecule the scientists call GUCY2C. Prior research discovered that this molecule is a marker that colorectal tumors express and that helps these cancer cells stand out from healthy cells.

Researchers paired this molecule with another one that augments an immune reaction with the hope that it would target the cancer cells and kill them.

“There is an urgent need to understand what fuels colorectal cancer growth, and to harness that knowledge for developing novel therapies,” says Karen E. Knudsen, Ph.D., who is the director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health in Philadelphia, PA.

“This pivotal study provides some of the first evidence that it may be possible to safely direct a patient’s own immune system to seek and destroy this cancer type. This is a true milestone — made possible through the scientists and clinicians in our colorectal cancer team working in synchrony.”