Marshall Posner, MD, on the Promise of Personalized mRNA Vaccines in Solid Malignancies

Marshall Posner, MD, professor of medicine, director of head and neck medical oncology, and associate director of the Center for Personalized Cancer Therapeutics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, spoke with CancerNetworkÒ at the 2021 European Society of Medical Oncology Congress about exciting future innovations in oncology, including the prospect of personalized mRNA vaccines for various solid tumors. Although promising data have read out on this modality, Posner addresses hurdles that need to be overcome before the treatment can roll out.

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There were some very interesting abstracts on precision vaccines, [which are] based on individual patient tumor targets. There are some very interesting data coming out on the ability to create these [vaccines]. I think the ability to create a vaccine that's mRNA based is really going to accelerate the ability to make individualized vaccines for various tumors. Once again, the problem will be the same. What else do you need besides the vaccine and the checkpoint blockade inhibitor, which is what people are generally using, to produce a robust immune response?