Novel 'off-the-shelf' vaccine shows promise against deadly pancreatic and colorectal cancers

Vaccine (green) trains T cells (red) to recognize and attack cancer cells with KRAS mutation. Illustration AI generated by Microsoft Designer

CANCER DIGEST – Aug. 15, 2025 – A novel cancer vaccine designed to rally the body's immune system against a common cancer-driving gene mutation has shown significant promise in an early-stage clinical trial for patients with pancreatic and colorectal cancer.

The study, led in part by researchers at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, found the vaccine could generate a powerful and lasting immune response, substantially delaying or preventing cancer recurrence in high-risk patients.

The findings, published Aug. 11, 2025 in the journal Nature Medicine, show that patients treated with the vaccine, called ELI-002 2P, who developed a strong immune response lived significantly longer and remained disease-free for much longer than expected historical norms.

“This is an exciting advance for patients with KRAS-driven cancers, particularly pancreatic cancer, where recurrence after standard treatment is almost a given and effective therapies are limited,” said Dr. Zev Wainberg, a professor of medicine at UCLA, researcher at the Jonsson Cancer Center, and the study's lead author. “We observed that patients who developed strong immune responses to the vaccine remained disease-free and survived for much longer than expected.”

The KRAS gene mutation is a major driver of many cancers, found in approximately 90% of pancreatic cancers and 50% of colorectal cancers. For decades, it has been considered one of the most difficult targets in cancer therapy.

The Phase 1 clinical trial followed 25 patients (20 with pancreatic cancer, 5 with colorectal cancer) who had already undergone surgery but still had traces of cancer DNA in their blood, a condition known as minimal residual disease, which often signals a high risk of relapse.

The results were striking. After an average follow-up of nearly 20 months:

• 84% of patients (21 of 25) generated cancer-fighting T cells that specifically targeted the KRAS mutation.

• Patients with a strong T-cell response (above the median) had extended relapse-free survival that, as of 20 months of follow-up, had not reached a median, compared to a median relapse-free survival of 3.02 months for those with a weaker response.

• Similarly, median overall survival has not been reached for the strong-responder group, versus 15.98 months for the low-responder group.

• In 24% of patients, (three pancreatic and three colorectal) tumor biomarkers were completely cleared from their blood.

Unlike personalized cancer vaccines that must be custom-made for each individual, ELI-002 2P is an "off-the-shelf" therapy. This means it is a standardized product that can be manufactured at scale, making it potentially faster, less expensive, and more accessible for a larger number of patients. The vaccine uses a unique technology developed by Elicio Therapeutics, the study's sponsor, which helps deliver the vaccine components directly to the lymph nodes to maximize the immune system's activation.

“Targeting KRAS has long been considered one of the difficult challenges in cancer therapy,” Wainberg said. “This study shows that the ELI-002 2P vaccine can safely and effectively train the immune system to recognize and fight cancer-driving mutations. It offers a promising approach to generating precise and durable immune responses without the complexity or cost of fully personalized vaccines.”

Building on these encouraging results, the research team has already completed enrollment for a larger Phase 2 study of a next-generation version of the vaccine that targets an even broader set of KRAS mutations.

The study was funded by Elicio Therapeutics.

Source: AI generated text by Google Gemini based on UCLA Health press release. Accuracy checked by Medical Digest Publications editor.