1504 | CANCER DISCOVERY JUL Y 2023 AACRJournals.orgNEWS IN BRIEF Personalized mRNA Vaccine Immunogenic against PDAC A personalized mRNA vaccine designed to target an individual’s tumor-specific neoantigens is showing early promise against pancreatic ductal adenocar - cinoma (PDAC), an aggressive cancer characterized by a low mutational burden and with few good immunotherapy op- tions (Nature 2023;618:144–50). “It’s a very compelling study, and it really sets the stage for future mRNA vaccine immunotherapy in pancreas cancer,” says Neeha Zaidi, MD, of The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD, who was not involved in the research but wrote an accompanying commentary (Nature 2023;618:37–8). In a phase I trial, researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York, NY, found that sequential administration of the anti–PD-L1 drug atezolizumab (Tecentriq; Genentech) followed by eight weekly infusions of autogene cevumeran (BNT122; BioNTech)—an mRNA vaccine formulated in lipoplex nanoparticles that contains up to 20 patient-specific neoantigens—and then a biweekly chemotherapy regimen extended recurrence-free survival in patients with PDAC whose tumors had been removed. Following vaccination, eight of 16 trial participants developed neoantigen- specific CD8+ T cells.