Pancreatic cancer vaccine shows encouraging results

(CNN, KYMA/KECY) - An mRNA vaccine that programs the body to fight pancreatic cancer is showing early promise.

The personalized cancer vaccine is being tested by BioNTech.

That's the German company that partnered with Pfizer to create a highly successful covid vaccine.

The pancreatic cancer vaccine is tailored to each patient's tumor by extracting the tumor and using genetic code from it.

16 patients were able to complete all phases of the pancreatic cancer vaccine study.

Eight of them responded to the vaccine, which taught their immune systems to recognize and fight off cancer cells.

None of those eight saw their cancer return.

Among the eight who did not respond adequately to the vaccine, two have not seen their cancer come back.

The surgeon who led the study points out it's a small study and shows correlation but not causation.