Personalized cancer vaccine
A vaccine custom-built for one patient from their own tumor's mutations — the central product of this field.
Unlike preventive vaccines, a personalized (or “individualized”) neoantigen vaccine is manufactured per patient: sequence the tumor and healthy tissue, identify mutations, predict the best neoantigens, and produce a vaccine — often as mRNA or synthetic peptides — encoding those targets.
The aim is to train the patient's immune system to attack cells bearing their specific neoantigens. High-profile programs (e.g. mRNA-based vaccines in melanoma) have driven much of the field's recent commercial momentum.
The economics and turnaround time hinge on the prediction step and manufacturing — the better the targets are chosen, the fewer doses are wasted on neoantigens that don't elicit a response.
Are personalized neoantigen cancer vaccines available now?
Not yet as approved products — they remain investigational, in clinical trials. The most advanced programs (such as mRNA-based individualized vaccines in melanoma and other tumors) are in Phase 2/3 trials, with the earliest approvals expected in the latter half of the decade.
Are mRNA cancer vaccines the same as neoantigen vaccines?
They overlap but aren't identical. "Neoantigen vaccine" describes what the vaccine targets (a tumor's mutation-derived antigens); "mRNA vaccine" describes how it's delivered (as messenger RNA). Many leading personalized neoantigen vaccines use the mRNA platform, but neoantigens can also be delivered as peptides, DNA, or viral vectors.
How is a personalized cancer vaccine made?
A patient's tumor and healthy tissue are sequenced and compared to find tumor-specific mutations; AI ranks which mutated peptides are most likely to be presented and immunogenic for that patient's HLA type; and a vaccine encoding the top targets is manufactured per patient — typically in a matter of weeks.