BioNTech, Neon teams report personalized cancer vaccine data

In papers published in Nature, two groups each reported results from Phase I studies showing responses to personalized neoantigen cancer vaccines to treat melanoma. The groups included a team from BioNTech AG (Mainz, Germany), and a group including co-founders of Neon Therapeutics Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.).

In the BioNTech team's paper, 13 stage III and IV melanoma patients were vaccinated with the Individualized Vaccines Against Cancer (IVAC) MUTANOME vaccine, an mRNA vaccine based on patient-specific neoantigens -- non-self antigens arising from cancer mutations. All patients showed T cell responses against at least three mutations.

Among the eight patients who had no detectable...