[HN Gopher] 'Universal cancer vaccine' trains the immune system ...
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'Universal cancer vaccine' trains the immune system to kill any
tumor
Author : 01-_-
Score : 85 points
Date : 2025-07-19 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| rpdillon wrote:
| This seems so cool that I was immediately suspicious, but this
| isn't my area of expertise, so it's hard for me to understand the
| original paper:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-025-01380-1
|
| This is the abstract, though, which suggests the need for a
| standard "in mice" disclaimer:
|
| > The success of cancer immunotherapies is predicated on the
| targeting of highly expressed neoepitopes, which preferentially
| favours malignancies with high mutational burden. Here we show
| that early responses by type-I interferons mediate the success of
| immune checkpoint inhibitors as well as epitope spreading in
| poorly immunogenic tumours and that these interferon responses
| can be enhanced via systemic administration of lipid particles
| loaded with RNA coding for tumour-unspecific antigens. In mice,
| the immune responses of tumours sensitive to checkpoint
| inhibitors were transferable to resistant tumours and resulted in
| heightened immunity with antigenic spreading that protected the
| animals from tumour rechallenge. Our findings show that the
| resistance of tumours to immunotherapy is dictated by the absence
| of a damage response, which can be restored by boosting early
| type-I interferon responses to enable epitope spreading and self-
| amplifying responses in treatment-refractory tumours.
| _Microft wrote:
| The submitted article mentions that it was a study conducted on
| mice though?
|
| [0] "In this study on mice with melanoma, the vaccine was able
| to clear existing tumors that had proven drug-resistant."
| slater wrote:
| It's common for medical articles posted here to have a great-
| sounding breakthrough in their title, and you then have to
| read the article to find out it's only been done in mice.
| "en-mice'd/en-micing" is a term for mods editing titles, here
| :D
| asdff wrote:
| Lay people act like this is a trump card but this is just
| how science is done. You can't really perform this in
| humans without having some data that it may very well work.
| Mice have been pretty good models for cancer biology.
| Nature Biotechnology is also a good and selective journal.
| slater wrote:
| I agree, I'm just mentioning it re: clickbait titles (not
| calling anyone out) vs. "oh, [xyz] hasn't been cured,
| there's just some promising results in mice"
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Out of curiosity, are there examples of drug development
| that did poorly in animal models, but then did much
| better in human trials?
|
| I'm guessing this is rarely tested since animal modeling
| is usually a gating factor for human testing?
| mrosett wrote:
| Checkpoint inhibitors (which are the primary driver of
| improved cancer treatment over the last 15 years and
| generate > $50B/year in sales) generally don't look very
| good preclinically. Even their clinical data can be hard
| to interpret prior to a large scale trial, which led to
| them almost being shelved.
|
| The catch here is that only two targets (PD(L)-1 and
| CTLA-4) turned out to work well in humans. All of the
| other immunotherapies that looked mediocre preclinically
| turned out to also be mediocre or entirely ineffective in
| humans.
| rolph wrote:
| a bit of context:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-019-0416-z
|
| https://news.uthscsa.edu/scientists-create-first-mouse-
| model...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41571-022-00721-2
|
| its not just, put it in a mouse, then guess about what
| happens to humans.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The linked article said the vaccine was still in pre-clinical
| trials, which means it hasn't been tested on humans yet. Mouse
| models are a stepping stone toward that. When you hear 'pre-
| clinical' think 'alpha testing', or 'proof of concept' stage.
| asdff wrote:
| Basically, seed tumors with IFN-1 using targeted RNA
| nanomolecules (that accumulated in the lungs in this case where
| they modeled lung cancers). This converts the tumor
| microenvironment from one hostile to immune cells to one where
| immune cells are now active and on the hunt for tumor specific
| neoantigens.
|
| The one open question I wish they would get at is the exact
| sentization mechanism behind the PD-L1 inhibitor and IFN-1
| response. The idea is that cancer cells have selective pressure
| to hide from the immune system and one way of doing that is
| presenting this PD-1 receptor to the PD-L1 ligand on the immune
| cell, an interaction that keeps the cancer cell from being killed
| and one that PD-L1 inhibitor drugs target to enable tumor cells
| to now be visible to the immune system (as they output a lot of
| screwed up things that are otherwise visible to the immune system
| as "not self").
|
| They tested tumors that aren't sensitive to pd-l1 inhibition so
| presumably evading immune surveillance another way instead of
| presenting PD-1, and then found them to then be sensitive to
| PD-L1.
|
| It could be that within a tumor there are subclonal cells that do
| express PD-1 but are otherwise protected from PD-L1 inhibitiion
| having any effect from the hostile tumor microenvironment keeping
| immune surveillance from operating normally anyhow. Induce the
| immune response, now the T cell is in the area for PD-L1
| inhibition to work. Another possibility is that the IFN-1
| induction leads to PD-1 now being expressed by cells that didn't
| do it previously.
|
| Authors didn't explore this though. Probably would take more
| experiments and mice are expensive and time consuming. It could
| be answered by single cell RNA sequencing of these unresponsive
| tumors and seeing if there is some subset of cryptic tumor cells
| that do express PD-1 already before IFN-1 induction. As well as
| measuring expression after IFN-1 induction (maybe several
| timepoints to measure change in gene expression profile in the
| tumor population, if any)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Something that "essentially tells the body to ... stimulate the
| immune system" usually would cause high fever? I didn't see this
| mentioned so wondering if it is or isn't a complication with
| this.
| rolph wrote:
| its a function, not a bug.
|
| Fever and the thermal regulation of immunity: the immune system
| feels the heat
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4786079/
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| ... in mice.
|
| Don't get me wrong, it's encouraging to see research in this
| field progressing. But there is a long list of treatments that
| work in mice that do not work in humans.
|
| I'll temper my enthusiasm with a healthy dose of pragmatism.
| amelius wrote:
| Of course it is in mice. If they were in the human testing
| phase, you would have read about it long before on HN!
| phtrivier wrote:
| But the title "inadvertently" forgets to mention that the
| "universal cancer vaccine" is not universal, not a vaccine,
| and does not cure cancer unless you're a rodent.
|
| So, of course it gets to the HN front page, because the title
| is so catchy !
|
| I guess the only way to make it go to the front page faster
| would have be to label the article : "MIT alumni-founded,
| Standford-based, YC-funded startup creates universal cancer
| vaccine with AI, in Rust"
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| mRNA research. Something which the current government just cut
| funding across the board.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If they smell a "universal cancer cure" the big pharmas will
| fund it themselves. It would be a license to print money.
| chasil wrote:
| It is just a vaccine that expresses common cancer epitopes.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Isn't this literally the plot of I Am Legend? And we also have
| scientists thawing out 2.5 million year old ice, just to see what
| happens. smh
| chasil wrote:
| Did this film address ribosomes?
|
| If not, no.
| more_corn wrote:
| Nope
| Nasrudith wrote:
| It seems that people's separation of reality and fiction has
| gotten downright dismal. I would blame LLMs but I have seen far
| too many peope unironically cite "Elysium" as "evidence of what
| the rich are planning" well before LLMs went mainstream.
| phtrivier wrote:
| I still hate those articles title with all my heart.
|
| Is there a way to ban lies about cancer vaccines, fusion
| reactors, and infinite battery storage ?
|
| Sure, okay, people are working on that, and they're making small
| incremental improvements and that's good for them ; and
| unfortunately they need to advertise to secure more funding for
| the later incremental stage of their research. I understand that.
|
| But please stop with the nonsensical "cancer vaccine", "miracle
| cancer treatment", "cancer breakthrough" etc... This is an insult
| to everyone who lost a loved one to cancer.
|
| Cause I'll be _really_ happy when a _real_ cure happens (as in,
| when anyone can go the their doctor, for real, and get a real
| "cure", and they have no cancer after that, and it's a simple as
| getting a cure for, well, you know, the diseases that we "cure",
| and that are definitely not cancer ?)
|
| But this is not today. Today we "deal" with cancer, we "spare"
| people some time, we squash it a bit and maybe save a couple of
| years if you have the "lucky" kind of cancer - and that's great,
| and let's continue doing that.
|
| But enough with the headlines.
|
| Play it like Apple, please.
|
| Tell me about it when I can buy it.
| hughw wrote:
| But we know how to read critically, don't we? When I read it, I
| searched for and noticed "mice" and "proof of concept" in the
| text, and understood the limited claims they're making. I'm
| glad to learn about this incremental progress because cancer
| immunotherapy seems a promising avenue.
| amelius wrote:
| > Tell me about it when I can buy it.
|
| Sorry if this comes across as snarky but perhaps you should not
| read posts on a hacker forum, and instead limit yourself to
| reading advertisements?
| hughw wrote:
| I miss the old @justsaysinmice twitter (account deleted)
|
| https://www.statnews.com/2019/04/15/in-mice-twitter-account-...
| taylodl wrote:
| I know a lot of people here are tired of these teaser headlines
| and don't want to be told anything until there's an actual cure.
| But here me out - I'm old enough to have lost several friends and
| family to cancer. Along the way there have _always_ been
| headlines like this where it seems that a breakthrough is
| imminent, and you know what? We are _much_ better at preventing,
| detecting, and treating cancer than we were 40 years ago!
|
| I personally know several people who have gotten breast cancer
| and survived! I remember when that was practically a death
| sentence. Ditto for colon cancer. Even your prospects for lung
| cancer have improved dramatically.
|
| What has made this progress possible is this relentless research.
| Research that leads to reports being published. Promising leads
| being discussed. A huge portion of this research leads to dead
| ends - BUT - some leads to real progress and has in turn lead to
| real lives being saved. So I say continue with the research and
| continue publishing and sharing the research results.
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