'Universal' cancer jab: Vaccine that stops all tumours in their tracks could be here in two years

A 'universal' vaccine that could revolutionise the treatment of cancer could be available in just two years.

The TeloVac jab is part of a new generation of drugs that use the body’s own defences to fight the disease, stopping tumours in their tracks.

TeloVac has already been given to hundreds of Britons with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease.

Fight: The TeloVac jab uses the body's own defences to fight cancer, stopping tumours in their tracks

But it is hoped it will be effective against many other tumours, including those of the skin, lung and liver. Breast and prostate cancers may also be within its grasp.

Together, the six forms of the disease claim more 70,000 lives a year in the UK.

In the case of pancreatic cancer, which killed actor Patrick Swayze, survival rates have barely improved in the past 40 years, and patients typically die within six months of diagnosis.

Just 3 per cent survive five years, and it is the fifth biggest cancer killer in the UK. Although vaccines usually prevent disease, the TeloVac jab is designed as a treatment.

Rather than attacking the cancer cells, like many existing drugs, it harnesses the power of the immune system to fight the tumours.

It works by encouraging the immune system to seek out and destroy an enzyme called telomerase. Found at high levels in many cancer cells, telomerase effectively makes them immortal, allowing them to live on when healthy cells would die – easing the growth and spread of the tumour.

In the largest trial of its kind in the UK, more than 1,000 men and women in the late stages of pancreatic cancer are either being given the vaccine alongside their normal drugs or treated as usual.

The results from the 53 hospitals taking part will not be available until next year but, anecdotally, some patients credit their participation in the trial with giving them an extra year or two of life. In earlier, smaller trials, the vaccine gave those in the late stages of the disease an average of an extra three months.



John Neoptolemos, who is co-ordinating the large-scale British trial, said: ‘When you have got pancreatic cancer, it is like a timebomb in people.’

Pancreatic cancer cells are normally invisible to the immune system but the vaccine ‘spots’ the telomerase spilling out from them and kick-starts the fight back.

Professor Neoptolemos, of Liverpool University, said: ‘It is like the immune system has a blindfold on and the vaccine takes the blindfold off.’

Healthy cells escape the attack because their levels of telomerase are too low to bother the immune system. This cuts the risk of side-effects such as nausea and hair loss normally seen with cancer drugs.

If the latest study, which is funded by Cancer Research UK, proves the jab’s worth, it could be available to treat advanced pancreatic cancer by the end of 2013. In time, it could be used earlier in the disease – and even to prevent it.

Dr Jay Sangjae Kim, the founder of GemVax, the Korean company developing the TeloVac vaccine, said: ‘We strongly believe this has the potential to overcome the limits of other current cancer vaccines and become part of the standard of care not only for pancreatic cancer but for various other types of cancers.

‘In other words, a truly “universal” vaccine will be available in the near future.’

Professor Peter Johnson, of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘We await the results with interest to see if this is an effective treatment.’