Dr. Reardon on a Personalized Neoantigen-Targeting Vaccine for GBM

David A. Reardon, MD, clinical director, Center for Neuro-Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses a personalized neoantigen-targeting vaccine for patients with glioblastoma (GBM).

GBM is the most common and deadliest cancer that arises in the central nervous system of adult patients, says Reardon. This is a tumor that has proven refractory to therapy, and the best treatments available currently are palliative. In a study of newly-diagnosed patients with GBM, investigators are creating a personalized vaccine. Through next-generation sequencing technology, the mutational landscape of each patient’s tumor was characterized. Then using established algorithms, Reardon says that they were able to predict the coding mutations that gave ride to mutant peptides that were most likely to be immunogenic in each patient. Those peptides were then administered back to the patients as a personalized vaccine for their specific tumor.

The standard of care for newly-diagnosed patients is surgical resection, followed by a 3- to 4-week resting period, and then radiation therapy, usually with chemotherapy. This standard of care lends itself to this novel approach, as the vaccine can be developed during this 6-week treatment period, Reardon says.