Vaccine Reduces Recurrence and Death in Pancreatic, Colorectal Cancers

An off-the-shelf cancer vaccine has been found to be associated with durable responses and a reduced risk of relapse or death among patients with pancreatic and colorectal cancers, as an expert explained in an interview with CURE.

“What we're showing here is that a group of patients who had a profound immune response after administration of this vaccine, and had a much lower risk of cancer coming back or dying from their pancreatic cancer and colon cancer than we would have anticipated based on historical references,” said Dr. Zev Wainberg. Wainberg is a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a researcher in the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Wainberg is the first author of a study published in Nature Medicine on ELI-002 2P, a vaccine designed to stimulate the immune system in order to target the common cancer-driving KRAS mutation, as explained in a news release from UCLA.

Looking ahead, UCLA has announced that the research team has completed enrollment in a phase 2 study of ELI-002 7P, a next-generation iteration of the vaccine.

Transcript

What we're showing here is that a group of patients who had a profound immune response after administration of this vaccine, and had a much lower risk of cancer coming back or dying from their pancreatic cancer and colon cancer than we would have anticipated based on historical references.

So that, with the 20-month follow-up time we had in the study, that's what we saw, that the most likely scenario is that the majority of them would have recurred earlier, and yet the people who had the highest immune response, which was about two-thirds of people on the study, the majority of them had not recurred, and none of them had died from their cancer.

We have to do the ultimate, which is the randomized study, which has actually already been completed. This was the phase 1 long follow-up study, and we've already done a randomized phase 2 study comparing the vaccine to no vaccine in the same group of patients, in essence. And so that study, we should have the results in 2026.

Reference

1. “Off-the-shelf cancer vaccine elicits strong immune response in patients with pancreatic and colorectal cancer,” UCLA, https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/shelf-cancer-vaccine-elicits-strong-immune-response-patients
2. “Lymph node-targeted, mKRAS-specific amphiphile vaccine in pancreatic and colorectal cancer: phase 1 AMPLIFY-201 trial final results” by Dr. Zev Wainberg et al., Nature Medicine.
3. “Off-The-Shelf Vaccine Elicits Durable Responses in Pancreatic, Colorectal Cancers,” CURE, Aug. 13, 2025; https://www.curetoday.com/view/off-the-shelf-vaccine-elicits-durable-responses-in-pancreatic-colorectal-cancers

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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