Next-gen vaccine prevents up to 88% of multiple aggressive cancers
By Paul McClure
October 09, 2025
A next-generation cancer vaccine has shown stunning results in mice, preventing up to 88% of aggressive and difficult-to-treat cancers by harnessing dual-pathway nanoparticles that train the immune system to recognize and destroy tumor cells.
Melanoma, pancreatic cancer, and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) are each serious clinical challenges due to how common or aggressive they are and how poorly they often respond to treatment. Which is why scientists are determined to develop an effective treatment for all of them.
A new study led by University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst researchers has brought us a step closer to achieving this, with their immune-stimulating nanoparticle-based vaccine that effectively prevented melanoma, pancreatic cancer and TNBC in mice.
“By engineering these nanoparticles to activate the immune system via multi-pathway activation that combines with cancer-specific antigens, we can prevent tumor growth with remarkable survival rates,” said Prabhani Atukorale, PhD, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the Riccio College of Engineering at UMass Amherst and the study’s corresponding author.
A new drug combination to treat advanced recurring prostate cancer has shown remarkable results in a long-term trial, lowering the risk of death after eight years by 40.3%. What's more, the drug treatments are already approved for use on their own.
The findings from the trial led by Cedars-Sinai Cancer researchers were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress (ESMO) on Sunday, October 19, in Berlin.
“After initial treatment, some patients see their prostate cancer come back in an aggressive way and are at risk for their disease to spread quickly,” said Stephen Freedland, MD, director of the Center for Integrated Research in Cancer and Lifestyle at Cedars-Sinai Cancer and co-principal investigator of the study. “Hormone therapy, which is what we’ve been offering patients for 30 years, has not improved survival and neither has anything else. That makes these findings a real game changer.”
Triple-negative breast cancer is one of the most aggressive cancers. The name tells the story: It lacks the three main targets that make other types of breast cancers more treatable with powerful therapies.
UCLA researchers have developed a novel therapy that could fundamentally change the treatment plan for this deadly disease. In a study published in the Journal of Hematology & Oncology, the team details how this new type of immunotherapy, called CAR-NKT cell therapy, could attack tumors from multiple fronts while dismantling their protective shields.
Getting a COVID shot might do more than protect against the virus – it could also help cancer patients live longer. A new study found that mRNA vaccines were linked to a doubling in three-year survival for those on immunotherapy.
Cancer immunotherapy helps the body’s own immune system recognize and attack cancer cells. Normally, cancer can hide in the body using “checkpoint” proteins that tell the immune system not to attack. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) block these proteins, removing the invisibility cloak from cancer cells and helping the immune system fight them more effectively.
Now, a new study led by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida has found that an unlikely source provides a significant boost to the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy: mRNA-based COVID vaccines.
The COVID-19 mRNA-based vaccines that saved 2.5 million lives globally during the pandemic could help spark the immune system to fight cancer. This is the surprising takeaway of a new study that we and our colleagues published in the journal Nature.
While developing mRNA vaccines for patients with brain tumors in 2016, our team, led by pediatric oncologist Elias Sayour, discovered that mRNA can train immune systems to kill tumors – even if the mRNA is not related to cancer.
Based on this finding, we hypothesized that mRNA vaccines designed to target the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 might also have antitumor effects.
So we looked at clinical outcomes for more than 1,000 late-stage melanoma and lung cancer patients treated with a type of immunotherapy called immune checkpoint inhibitors. This treatment is a common approach doctors use to train the immune system to kill cancer. It does this by blocking a protein that tumor cells make to turn off immune cells, enabling the immune system to continue killing cancer.
Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapies have revolutionized cancer treatment—but so far, their success has been largely limited to blood cancers. Solid tumors, which account for around 90% of all adult cancers, remain a major challenge because they are difficult for CAR T cells to infiltrate and are often highly heterogeneous, making them harder to target with a single therapy.
Researchers at Monash University, in collaboration with scientists from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center, used CRISPR-based gene editing or a PTPN2 inhibitor to enhance the function of human CAR T cells engineered to recognize an antigen expressed on many solid tumors.
New Cancer Drug Shows Exceptional Tumor-fighting Potential October 30, 2025
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) A research team led by the Medical University of Vienna, the HUN-REN Research Centre for Natural Sciences and the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest has developed a groundbreaking new chemotherapeutic agent, LiPyDau, which shows remarkable efficacy against multiple tumor types in preclinical studies. Published in the leading journal Molecular Cancer, the study introduces a highly promising strategy for tackling drug-resistant cancers.
Chemotherapy remains a cornerstone of cancer treatment despite well-known challenges, including toxic side effects and drug resistance. The research team led by Gergely Szakács from the Center for Cancer Research at MedUni Vienna, has been investigating drug resistance mechanisms and exploring ways to overcome them. The researchers synthetized a highly potent new derivative of anthracycline, a class of chemotherapeutic agents that has been central to cancer therapy for decades. The new compound, a chemically modified form of daunorubicin, proved too toxic for direct administration. To overcome this, it was encapsulated in tiny carrier vesicles called liposomes, creating LiPyDau. This liposomal formulation delivers the active ingredient directly to tumour cells while minimizing damage to healthy tissues. In mouse models of various cancers, LiPyDau dramatically reduced tumor burden and, in some instances, completely eliminated them. Unique mechanism causes tumour cells to die
In preclinical studies, a single dose of LiPyDau almost completely inhibited tumour growth in a melanoma model. In lung cancer, the treatment was effective in both a standard mouse model and a model with human tumour cells that did not respond to common drugs. In aggressive mouse breast cancer models, LiPyDau treatment led to a near-complete tumour regression. Remarkably, in hereditary, difficult-to-treat forms of breast cancer, tumours were permanently eliminated. LiPyDau also showed promising activity against multi-drug resistant tumour cells. LiPyDau's exceptional efficacy is driven by a unique mechanism: it irreversibly links the two strands of DNA in cancer cells, causing damage that the tumour cells can no longer repair, ultimately leading to their death.
New cancer-combat strategy revealed: Knocking out its taste receptors
By Michael Franco
November 08, 2025
Bitter taste receptors inside cancer cells have been found to be activated in the presence of anti-cancer drugs. Shutting these receptors down could make the cells more susceptible to drug treatment and help us fight the disease more effectively.
You already know that the human tongue has taste receptors on it that respond to bitter flavors. While that helps some of us love and others loathe tastes like super-dark chocolate or black coffee, the evolutionary purpose of these receptors is to keep us from eating things that could harm or kill us.
What you may not have realized though is that there are other biological structures that also have bitter taste receptors.
They've been found in lung cells where they cause muscles to relax and therefore have been studied as a potential treatment for asthma and COPD. They exist in our intestines where they've been found to affect the aging process. And they've been found in oral and neck cancer cells with one study finding that their activation using the common anesthetic, lidocaine, caused the cells to die off.
Immunotherapy, which harnesses our body's own immune system to fight cancer, has revolutionized modern oncology. Yet despite its success with several cancers, many patients still fail to respond to therapy or experience relapse later on. Scientists have long sought ways to pinpoint how cancer shuts down the immune response, and to flip the switch back on right at that site.
A new study from the Weizmann Institute of Science, published today in Cell, suggests that the solution might lie within the tumor's own defenses. The study focuses on macrophages—large, versatile cells that perform essential functions throughout body tissues but, when found in the tumor microenvironment, often begin collaborating with the cancer.
Israeli researchers achieve breakthrough with new lymphoma treatment posting 100% survival rates
Study, conducted in 15 medical centers, shows a new chemo-biologic protocol achieving 95% complete response, minimal need for radiation and strong real-world results, placing Israeli researchers at the forefront of global care
