Dr. Catherine Wu is chief of the Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and institute member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Catherine Wu

Dr. Catherine Wu discussed the unique aspects of clear cell renal cell carcinoma and the challenges of targeting it with a vaccine. 

Personalized Cancer Vaccine Demonstrates Responses in Kidney Cancer 

Among patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma, a form of kidney cancer, a personalized cancer vaccine demonstrated anti-cancer immune responses, according to recent study findings published in 

The study enrolled nine patients with stage 3 and 4 clear cell renal cell carcinoma, who received a personalized cancer vaccine following the surgical removal of their tumors. The patients who received the vaccine experienced anti-cancer immune responses, with all patients remaining cancer-free at a median data cut-off of 34.7 months, or nearly three years, according to researchers.

CURE® spoke with the study’s co-senior author, Dr. Catherine Wu, chief of the Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and institute member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, in Boston. In an interview, she noted that the current standard of care for this patient population is surgery.

“And then they wait,” she continued. “And 30% to 40% of those patients will relapse over time, within two years.”

Wu spoke with CURE about the unique aspects of clear cell renal cell carcinoma that make it a particularly challenging potential target for cancer vaccines.

Melanoma is so often a poster child for cancer immunotherapy. There are some unique aspects of melanoma, meaning that it's what we call a high mutation burden tumor. There are lots of different mutations to choose from. We kind of have an easier time creating a vaccine.

With renal cell [carcinoma], it's a much lower tumor mutation burden, so the bar is higher for us to work a little bit harder. One of the key things about the study is that we demonstrate that even with a lower-mutation burden tumor, we still are successful in consistently generating a vaccine for every patient that we treated; it can still generate a strong immune response

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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“A neoantigen vaccine generates antitumour immunity in renal cell carcinoma” by Dr. David A. Braun et al., 

Dr. Catherine Wu

Personalized Cancer Vaccine Demonstrates Responses in Kidney Cancer

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