Three-year follow-up: vaccine responders in pancreatic cancer stay relapse-free, with T cells estimated to live for years

BioNTech/Autogene cevumeran (BNT122)

A follow-up paper in Nature tracked the Phase 1 pancreatic patients for a median 3.2 years. The 8 vaccine responders still had not reached median relapse, against 13.4 months for the 8 non-responders, and the vaccine-induced T-cell clones had an estimated median lifespan of 7.7 years.

• About a quarter of the T-cell clones had estimated lifespans of more than a decade.
• A median 86% of tracked clones were still present at substantial levels about 3 years after vaccination.
• Small, single-centre study; the randomized IMCODE003 trial is meant to test whether the benefit is real.