People at high risk of lung cancer will soon be able to receive the first ever experimental vaccine designed to prevent the disease, in a world-first clinical trial led by researchers at UCL and the University of Oxford.
The BRC-supported research team has been awarded up to £2.06 million from Cancer Research UK, supported by the CRIS Cancer Foundation, to run a clinical trial of LungVax over the next four years.
This phase I trial will investigate the best dose of LungVax to give to people at high risk of lung cancer, as well as looking for any potential side-effects from different doses of the vaccine.
The trial is expected to begin in summer 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.
Professor Mariam Jamal-Hanjani, co-founder and lead for the LungVax clinical trials, from UCL Cancer Institute, UCLH and the Francis Crick Institute, said: “Fewer than 10% of people with lung cancer survive their disease for 10 years or more. That must change, and that change will come from targeting lung cancer at the earliest stages.
“The LungVax clinical trial is the crucial first step in bringing this vaccine to people at the highest risk of the disease. We will be looking carefully at how people respond to the vaccine, how easy it is to deliver, and who might benefit from it most in the future.
“Preventative vaccines will not replace stopping smoking as the best way to reduce the risk of lung cancer. But they could offer a viable route to preventing some cancers from emerging in the first place.”
Lung cancer cells are different from normal cells. They have ‘red flag’ proteins made by cancer-causing mutations within their DNA. These are called neoantigens and tumour associated antigens and appear on the surface of cells at a very early stage of lung cancer formation.
The LungVax vaccine carries a series of genetic instructions which train the immune system to recognise these tumour antigens on the surface of abnormal lung cells. In trialling the vaccine, the aim is to get the immune system to recognise these early abnormal cells, and kill them before they start to become cancer. The vaccine uses technology developed by the University of Oxford during the COVID-19 pandemic to deliver these instructions to the immune system.
To find out how safe and effective the vaccine is, the trial will initially focus on people who have been diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer and have had it successfully removed but are at risk of it returning. The vaccine will also be tested in people who are undergoing lung cancer screening as part of the NHS Lung Cancer Screening Programme in England.
If the trial delivers promising results, the vaccine could then be scaled up to larger trials for people at risk of lung cancer.
There are around 48,500 cases of lung cancer every year in the UK. Around 72% of lung cancers are caused by smoking, which is the biggest preventable cause of cancer worldwide.
Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, Michelle Mitchell, said: "We want to see a world where more cancers are prevented. We are now at a stage where our knowledge of the biology of cancer, built over years of painstaking research, opens new opportunities to prevent the disease.
“By supporting the LungVax clinical trial, we will put the vaccine through the most rigorous scientific tests and take that important first step towards a world where people live longer, better lives, free from the fear of lung cancer.”
Image credit: Adobe Stock / utah51
