The NIHR Leeds Clinical Research Facility (CRF) at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTHT) has been chosen to support a new NHS England programme, increasing access to research into cancer vaccines.
The Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad (CVLP) aims to boost patient involvement in national trials of new innovative personalised colorectal cancer vaccines. The CVLP’s initial work will link with the clinical trial of the personalised colorectal cancer vaccine BNT122-01, supported by BioNTech SE.
The Leeds CRF will refer eligible patients newly diagnosed with a particular type of bowel cancer to The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester to be considered for the trial.
It is anticipated that in time the CVLP will identify patients with other types of cancer looking at different vaccines and trials, into which thousands of patients in hospitals across England will be recruited. This will streamline participation in these innovative clinical trials and make it more accessible to patients from hospitals nationwide.
The goals of the CVLP are to advance personalised treatment, initially by supporting recruitment to the trial of BNT122-01, transferring tissue samples for genomic sequencing and assessing CVLP’s feasibility for expanding support to other personalised cancer vaccine trials in the future.
Director of the Leeds CRF, Professor Chris Twelves: “We are delighted to be working with the CVLP and colleagues in the gastrointestinal cancer team to offer patients the opportunity to take part in a clinical trial looking at a ‘personalised’ vaccine designed to reduce the risk of bowel cancer coming back. This is just one of an increasing number of innovative cancer vaccine trials open to patients in and around our region.”
Professor Mark Saunders, consultant oncologist, who is running the trial at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester: “We are very supportive of this new initiative and are delighted to be working with CVLP and collaborating with Leeds Teaching Hospitals to facilitate this exciting vaccine trial. This is a trial for patients with detectable tumour genes in their blood after curative surgery. The hope is that patients randomised to the personalised vaccine have a better chance of long-term survival and cure.”
Further information on the Cancer Vaccine Launchpad can be found here.
Image: The CRF Team. Provided by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
